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I’ve been thinking about this for a while, why do these news apps like this one or Prismatic in 2014 not work in the english speaking market but in the Chinese

I’ve been thinking about this for a while, why do these news apps like this one or Prismatic in 2014 not work in the english speaking market but in the Chinese market Toutiao was a massive success for bytedance? What is the difference that makes it so hard for news apps to work in the English market?

kristjank 3y ago
I bet China makes it really easy to sell to a big, unified market since the levels of social repression and form-fitting are much higher compared to other parts of the world. It's easy to sell the party bulletin when nothing else is allowed to circulate :^) Also, the anglosphere consists of many diverse groups of people due to its role as a universal second language. That might make a generalized approach fail with a lot of customers.
- stanleykm 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - tourmalinetaco 3y ago
    And whats exactly racist about saying the CCP censors news, that culture informs people’s views of the world, and that since English is a widespread language that English-based services have more varied cultures to traverse?
  - cscurmudgeon 3y ago
    Which part is genuine racism? Any statement about China will be unintentionally racist due to China being an ethnostate that largely prevents migration into China. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_China#Legal_immigration_and_permanent_residency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_China#Legal_imm... "In 2016, China issued 1,576 permanent residency cards. This was more than double what it had issued the previous year, but still roughly 750 times lower than the United States’ 1.2 million at the time.[3]"
- spoonjim 3y ago
  You don’t really know anything about China. Unless you are directly criticizing the government it’s just like anywhere else.
  - tourmalinetaco 3y ago
    And what does “anywhere else” mean here?
  - galaxyofdoom 3y ago
    You are so correct. The only thing different about China is government oppression and nothing else. You cannot make omelets without cracking a few fake eggs.
  - trevyn 3y ago
    Directly criticizing the government is basically the national sport in most western countries.
Barrin92 3y ago
Because China leapfrogged over the early internet era. In the West traditional publishers have strong brands and independent digital presences, mentally everything is a 'website' not a 'app'. It's also why traditional search is much more popular in the West than in China. In the West the internet is an open protocol where independent institutions publish their own information still. Things are indexable, locatable, and so on. Chinese users grew up on everything being app content, traditional media is just an input like any other that agglomerators consume and then present algorithmically to users, everything is completely mixed between user generated content and news stories and there's no particular notion of news or journalism as a distinct entity.
notaustinpowers 3y ago
This is purely from my experience with friends/family/coworkers so it may not be the real reason. I've experienced that most people in America focus on one news source (this is primarily the older market), or they are fully agnostic in their sources and get their news from social media and Twitter/X (the younger market). Services like Artifact, which show news articles from a variety of sources do not mesh well with either of these larger markets. An older market who prefers their singular news source does not want to read news from anyone they don't trust. And the younger market aren't fans of specifically just reading news. It's usually peppered in with posts from friends, or it's trending and has a large discussion on Twitter/X. So the market becomes limited to people who get their news from various sources and prefer absorbing their news at specific times and in specific ways. In the American market, I believe it's just too small of a market to become profitable.
esafak 3y ago
Thank you for mentioning prismatic! It was awesome. They just couldn't monetize it, if memory serves. They made the unconventional choice of using Clojure: https://github.com/plumatic https://github.com/plumatic
SllX 3y ago
Because the state of news sites on the English web in 2024 is that they’re ad-infested garbage experiences that introduce themselves by begging for your email address and requesting permission to set tracking cookies, or they’re paywalled, or they do all of the above! You can aggregate as much shit as you want but unless you’re using it to manufacture fertilizer it’s still just shit, and that’s before even going into the content of what passes as news nowadays.

kristjank 3y ago

I bet China makes it really easy to sell to a big, unified market since the levels of social repression and form-fitting are much higher compared to other parts of the world. It's easy to sell the party bulletin when nothing else is allowed to circulate :^) Also, the anglosphere consists of many diverse groups of people due to its role as a universal second language. That might make a generalized approach fail with a lot of customers.

stanleykm 3y ago
[flagged]
- tourmalinetaco 3y ago
  And whats exactly racist about saying the CCP censors news, that culture informs people’s views of the world, and that since English is a widespread language that English-based services have more varied cultures to traverse?
- cscurmudgeon 3y ago
  Which part is genuine racism? Any statement about China will be unintentionally racist due to China being an ethnostate that largely prevents migration into China. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_China#Legal_immigration_and_permanent_residency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_China#Legal_imm... "In 2016, China issued 1,576 permanent residency cards. This was more than double what it had issued the previous year, but still roughly 750 times lower than the United States’ 1.2 million at the time.[3]"
spoonjim 3y ago
You don’t really know anything about China. Unless you are directly criticizing the government it’s just like anywhere else.
- tourmalinetaco 3y ago
  And what does “anywhere else” mean here?
- galaxyofdoom 3y ago
  You are so correct. The only thing different about China is government oppression and nothing else. You cannot make omelets without cracking a few fake eggs.
- trevyn 3y ago
  Directly criticizing the government is basically the national sport in most western countries.

Barrin92 3y ago

Because China leapfrogged over the early internet era. In the West traditional publishers have strong brands and independent digital presences, mentally everything is a 'website' not a 'app'. It's also why traditional search is much more popular in the West than in China. In the West the internet is an open protocol where independent institutions publish their own information still. Things are indexable, locatable, and so on. Chinese users grew up on everything being app content, traditional media is just an input like any other that agglomerators consume and then present algorithmically to users, everything is completely mixed between user generated content and news stories and there's no particular notion of news or journalism as a distinct entity.

notaustinpowers 3y ago

This is purely from my experience with friends/family/coworkers so it may not be the real reason. I've experienced that most people in America focus on one news source (this is primarily the older market), or they are fully agnostic in their sources and get their news from social media and Twitter/X (the younger market). Services like Artifact, which show news articles from a variety of sources do not mesh well with either of these larger markets. An older market who prefers their singular news source does not want to read news from anyone they don't trust. And the younger market aren't fans of specifically just reading news. It's usually peppered in with posts from friends, or it's trending and has a large discussion on Twitter/X. So the market becomes limited to people who get their news from various sources and prefer absorbing their news at specific times and in specific ways. In the American market, I believe it's just too small of a market to become profitable.

esafak 3y ago

Thank you for mentioning prismatic! It was awesome. They just couldn't monetize it, if memory serves. They made the unconventional choice of using Clojure: https://github.com/plumatic https://github.com/plumatic

SllX 3y ago

Because the state of news sites on the English web in 2024 is that they’re ad-infested garbage experiences that introduce themselves by begging for your email address and requesting permission to set tracking cookies, or they’re paywalled, or they do all of the above! You can aggregate as much shit as you want but unless you’re using it to manufacture fertilizer it’s still just shit, and that’s before even going into the content of what passes as news nowadays.