4 ms·

To me, there is a sense that the news, which is real information about the society that we currently live in, should be availabe to all participants of that soc

To me, there is a sense that the news, which is real information about the society that we currently live in, should be availabe to all participants of that society. The notion of being a good citizen requires that one stays informed. Books, movies, videogames etc. don't have that role and are more consumption goods.

afavour 3y ago
It’s a difficult problem with no great answers. If you want news to be free at the point of delivery you want public service news agencies. But that means they’re owned by the government… who are frequently the target of critical reporting.
- bongripper 3y ago
  That's not true. You can have Independent public broadcasting that is not owned by the government and is reporting critically on it.
  - afavour 3y ago
    It’s still a difficult tension. The government will always control the purse strings so independence is always going to come with conditions.
    - vidarh 3y ago
      The Guardian in the UK is an example of an alternative: It is owned by a trust, which funds it. Norway has substantial public media funding across the political spectrum, but as you point out it always comes with conditions, even is less so than the funding for the state owned broadcaster. Combining the two models and putting public funds into several perpetual trusts intended to provide funding from their profits at arms length from any sitting government similar to the (private) trust funding The Guardian might be an interesting alternative. (EDIT: Norway also has its own variation over The Guardian model - the second largest media group was founded by unions but is now majority owned by the combination of two public benefit trusts)
guhidalg 3y ago
I agree, but nothing worth having is free. NYT and other news outlets have to ultimately pay reporters to go out into the world and do the work. The reporters are not priests, and the NYT is not a church that lives off donations and tax exemptions. They need money to operate, and you may disagree with how they try to collect that money (paywall) but that doesn't solve their funding problem. How would you pay for news otherwise?
- Ntrails 3y ago
  > How would you pay for news otherwise? You could subsidise news via "public service" style stipends. Much like having a government owned "independent" news service (eg the BBC) this comes with a high risk of corruption. Don't bite the hand that feeds and all that. You could implement a much lower friction non-recurring payment system. I'd be far more tempted to drop a little money on a fixed term (5 articles, 1 day, ???) setup than a subscription. Realistically, I am not paying for more than 1 long running sub. And there are > that number of solid outlets.
  - lotsofpulp 3y ago
    > Realistically, I am not paying for more than 1 long running sub. And there are > that number of solid outlets. This is somewhat what Apple News+ works like, but I doubt most news orgs want to be held captive by Apple.
  - iamacyborg 3y ago
    > I'd be far more tempted to drop a little money on a fixed term (5 articles, 1 day, ???) setup than a subscription. I believe that’s often referred to as a newspaper, which should be available in all good newsagents on any given day.
    - Ntrails 3y ago
      I'll just pop out to the nearest newsagent that stocks the NYT so I can engage with a news aggregator (But yes, that is the model)
ahoka 3y ago
Not everything is news that appears in a newspaper. There are opinion pieces, etc.
JackFr 3y ago
> should be available to all participants of that society. Who pays?
- fodkodrasz 3y ago
  The government (thus the people, in a so called sharing of public burden)! For example in Hungary there is an official news agency ran by the government, with (cumbersome) free access for everybody. Of course this does provide somewhat biased presentation of some facts, but on many topics it provides unbiased access to news for any citizen. This is actually pretty common in Europe, often funded by mandatory fees (for some reason not branded as taxes) certain appliance owners need to pay (UK TV license, German Rundfunkbeitrag). For this fee people get access to news and cultural programmes for free via different media (radio, TV, internet).
  - bongripper 3y ago
    I agree with your general point but Hungary is probably the worst example you could have chosen from any EU country! The Orbán government is famously using it to spread propaganda and fake information in unprecedented levels. The level of control governments exert on public broadcasting networks is widely different. Since Meloni, the RAI in Italy is facing similar issues, but Hungary is still the canonic example of government misinformation and propaganda.
    - fodkodrasz 3y ago
      That is a orthogonal to the discussion we were having. The topic was whether people should have free access to news, and how should it be financed, not the quality of that news. People have free access to public roads all around the world, and the quality wildly differs in that as well. Also the quality of for-profit news services does differ wildly, you might have an opinion about that of fox news, for example, but that is also off topic in this discussion.
      - nulbyte 3y ago
Baldbvrhunter 3y ago
what about wordle or the crossword or the cooking section https://cooking.nytimes.com/ https://cooking.nytimes.com/
pawelmurias 3y ago
> which is real information People post archive links even to fake NY Times.
sumedh 3y ago
> which is real information about the society that we currently live in, should be availabe to all participants of that society. Who should pay the journalists or the investigative reporters?
- malermeister 3y ago
  The state, through taxes. It's a public good after all.
  - sumedh 3y ago
    So you want someone like Trump to control the media?
    - malermeister 3y ago
      No. I want an independent, but state-financed media, like the ARD or the BBC.
rickydroll 3y ago
I'm of a similar mind. I take the more expansive view that everything created is part of our common property and that something like an LLM should be able to yield the summary and references to those creations. As I've said elsewhere, LLM systems might be our first practical example of an infinite number of monkeys typing and recreating Shakespeare (or the New York Times). I understand that copyrights and patents are vehicles for ensuring a creator gets paid for their work, but they are flawed in not rewarding multiple parallel creations and that they last too long.
- briansm 3y ago
  a LLM is just a hugely lossy-compressed version of its training data, an abstraction of it. Much in the same way as when you read a book, your brain doesn't become a pirated copy of the text as you only store a hugely compressed version of it afterwards, a feeling for the plot, generated images and so on.
  - rickydroll 3y ago
    That's what I thought from my various readings about LLM systems. I'm guessing that the kerfuffle from the New York Times and other shortsighted organizations is that copyright allows them to control how their content is used. With humans, it's simple as its read and misremembered. Using it for LLM training requires a different model. It probably should be a RAND fee system based on volume of training data because, as you say, the training data is converted into an abstract form.

afavour 3y ago

It’s a difficult problem with no great answers. If you want news to be free at the point of delivery you want public service news agencies. But that means they’re owned by the government… who are frequently the target of critical reporting.

bongripper 3y ago
That's not true. You can have Independent public broadcasting that is not owned by the government and is reporting critically on it.
- afavour 3y ago
  It’s still a difficult tension. The government will always control the purse strings so independence is always going to come with conditions.
  - vidarh 3y ago
    The Guardian in the UK is an example of an alternative: It is owned by a trust, which funds it. Norway has substantial public media funding across the political spectrum, but as you point out it always comes with conditions, even is less so than the funding for the state owned broadcaster. Combining the two models and putting public funds into several perpetual trusts intended to provide funding from their profits at arms length from any sitting government similar to the (private) trust funding The Guardian might be an interesting alternative. (EDIT: Norway also has its own variation over The Guardian model - the second largest media group was founded by unions but is now majority owned by the combination of two public benefit trusts)

guhidalg 3y ago

I agree, but nothing worth having is free. NYT and other news outlets have to ultimately pay reporters to go out into the world and do the work. The reporters are not priests, and the NYT is not a church that lives off donations and tax exemptions. They need money to operate, and you may disagree with how they try to collect that money (paywall) but that doesn't solve their funding problem. How would you pay for news otherwise?

Ntrails 3y ago
> How would you pay for news otherwise? You could subsidise news via "public service" style stipends. Much like having a government owned "independent" news service (eg the BBC) this comes with a high risk of corruption. Don't bite the hand that feeds and all that. You could implement a much lower friction non-recurring payment system. I'd be far more tempted to drop a little money on a fixed term (5 articles, 1 day, ???) setup than a subscription. Realistically, I am not paying for more than 1 long running sub. And there are > that number of solid outlets.
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  > Realistically, I am not paying for more than 1 long running sub. And there are > that number of solid outlets. This is somewhat what Apple News+ works like, but I doubt most news orgs want to be held captive by Apple.
- iamacyborg 3y ago
  > I'd be far more tempted to drop a little money on a fixed term (5 articles, 1 day, ???) setup than a subscription. I believe that’s often referred to as a newspaper, which should be available in all good newsagents on any given day.
  - Ntrails 3y ago
    I'll just pop out to the nearest newsagent that stocks the NYT so I can engage with a news aggregator (But yes, that is the model)

ahoka 3y ago

Not everything is news that appears in a newspaper. There are opinion pieces, etc.

JackFr 3y ago

> should be available to all participants of that society. Who pays?

fodkodrasz 3y ago
The government (thus the people, in a so called sharing of public burden)! For example in Hungary there is an official news agency ran by the government, with (cumbersome) free access for everybody. Of course this does provide somewhat biased presentation of some facts, but on many topics it provides unbiased access to news for any citizen. This is actually pretty common in Europe, often funded by mandatory fees (for some reason not branded as taxes) certain appliance owners need to pay (UK TV license, German Rundfunkbeitrag). For this fee people get access to news and cultural programmes for free via different media (radio, TV, internet).
- bongripper 3y ago
  I agree with your general point but Hungary is probably the worst example you could have chosen from any EU country! The Orbán government is famously using it to spread propaganda and fake information in unprecedented levels. The level of control governments exert on public broadcasting networks is widely different. Since Meloni, the RAI in Italy is facing similar issues, but Hungary is still the canonic example of government misinformation and propaganda.
  - fodkodrasz 3y ago
    That is a orthogonal to the discussion we were having. The topic was whether people should have free access to news, and how should it be financed, not the quality of that news. People have free access to public roads all around the world, and the quality wildly differs in that as well. Also the quality of for-profit news services does differ wildly, you might have an opinion about that of fox news, for example, but that is also off topic in this discussion.
    - nulbyte 3y ago

Baldbvrhunter 3y ago

what about wordle or the crossword or the cooking section https://cooking.nytimes.com/ https://cooking.nytimes.com/

pawelmurias 3y ago

> which is real information People post archive links even to fake NY Times.

sumedh 3y ago

> which is real information about the society that we currently live in, should be availabe to all participants of that society. Who should pay the journalists or the investigative reporters?

malermeister 3y ago
The state, through taxes. It's a public good after all.
- sumedh 3y ago
  So you want someone like Trump to control the media?
  - malermeister 3y ago
    No. I want an independent, but state-financed media, like the ARD or the BBC.

rickydroll 3y ago

I'm of a similar mind. I take the more expansive view that everything created is part of our common property and that something like an LLM should be able to yield the summary and references to those creations. As I've said elsewhere, LLM systems might be our first practical example of an infinite number of monkeys typing and recreating Shakespeare (or the New York Times). I understand that copyrights and patents are vehicles for ensuring a creator gets paid for their work, but they are flawed in not rewarding multiple parallel creations and that they last too long.

briansm 3y ago
a LLM is just a hugely lossy-compressed version of its training data, an abstraction of it. Much in the same way as when you read a book, your brain doesn't become a pirated copy of the text as you only store a hugely compressed version of it afterwards, a feeling for the plot, generated images and so on.
- rickydroll 3y ago
  That's what I thought from my various readings about LLM systems. I'm guessing that the kerfuffle from the New York Times and other shortsighted organizations is that copyright allows them to control how their content is used. With humans, it's simple as its read and misremembered. Using it for LLM training requires a different model. It probably should be a RAND fee system based on volume of training data because, as you say, the training data is converted into an abstract form.