4 ms·

> The only way media companies can make a profit today is to engage in either right wing (Fox, Newsmax) or left-wing (MSNBC, Rachal Maddow) commentary. This i

> The only way media companies can make a profit today is to engage in either right wing (Fox, Newsmax) or left-wing (MSNBC, Rachal Maddow) commentary. This is not something new.. In Holland we've had left wing and right wing newspapers forever. And their focus was a lot more pronounced. But this was about political news. Facts were relatively untouched. > Where do all these nutty ideas come from? They come from media companies who have found out that telling people what they want to hear is more profitable than what they need to hear. This is the root cause of the problem IMO. It's not the lack of fact checkers. That's only a symptom. The problem is that news services no longer care about the truth. Because they're commercial entities too and they thrive by selling people what they want to hear. And of course engagement at all costs including inciting hatred is something they learned from Facebook and the other social media. This phenomenon is more pronounced in the US but it's making it way to Europe as well.

rhelz 3y ago
// The problem is that news services no longer care about the truth. // But...(using Elon Musk's 6 levels of asking "why" methodology) Why do the news services no longer care about the truth? Because they can't make money printing the truth. They can only make money by printing opinions. Why can't they make money printing the truth? Because their old business models have been nuked, and its just too expensive for them to hire those fact checkers and editors. Why do they switch to just printing opinions then?? Because if you can make money printing opinions, you don't need fact checkers anyways. Its hella cheaper to just put "people are asking...." in front of something than checking to see if that something is actually true. Why can you make money printing opinions? Because people would rather watch a mammarily- and rhetorically-blessed person who is very articulately telling them what they already believe. Why do they prefer to hear what they already believe? That way they don't have to admit that those annoying self-righteous guys might have a point.... Why don't they want to admit that somebody else might have a good point? Because nobody likes to lose an argument. *that* is the problem which Australia's laws are trying to fix....no doubt there is a better way, but I can't think of any.....can you?
- wkat4242 3y ago
  > And if you can make money printing opinions, you don't need fact checkers anyways. That's what I said next, in other words. It's not even about their old business model, it's that the new one nets them more money which is what their shareholders want. Shareholders always trump principles in strict neoliberal states. > that is the problem which Australia's laws are trying to fix....no doubt there is a better way, but I can't think of any.....can you? More state media in my opinion. But I'm more socialist than the US or Australia so mentioning this option is like cursing there. But here in West Europe we've always had those and even multiple for different ideological directions. The problem isn't really the news agencies themselves either. It's that they compete with social media that incite users to 'engage' them and they've come to actually like that. Which is why it worked in the first place. Europe is becoming a lot stricter on social media filtering algorithms and I think this is really hitting the root cause too. Though not directly (or timely) saving the news industry.
  - rhelz 3y ago
    More state media is a good idea. If telling the truth is no longer profitable, then some kind of non-profit institution must step up, and the government is a good way to get funding. In the U.S., we have always had NPR as a publicly-funded alternative. It has become a lightning-rod, however, accused of being biased or being propaganda for the deep state, etc. And really, what would be a good proof that it is not biased? We don't really want to anoint a Minister of Truth. Who gets to say what is and what isn't biased?? Private competition is a way, and, when media companies competed on how credible they were, i.e. the most accurate news sources got the most money, it worked pretty good. But now they simply cannot compete on credibility, because its just too damn expensive to be accurate. What to do? I don't know, but I'm not willing to just dismiss Australia's laws out of hand as being axiomatically evil. At least they are trying to do something.
  - ambichook 3y ago
    the ABC is ok, it at least provides a baseline for news reporting, although like any media it has its own blind spots. i personally am strongly opposed to forcing browsers and facebook to prop up independent media, though i dont have a better solution ready off the top of my head. my gut says that the solution that was chosen was a poor one and a better alternative should have been searched for
Terr_ 3y ago
> The problem is that news services no longer care about the truth. Hypothesis: The cause is the increase in per-article-discoverability and the decrease in per-publisher stickiness. Nowadays the brand of the source is less important, because people often bypass it by web-searching or social-media referrals. The penalty for falsehoods is lower, and the revenue from click-bait content is higher.
- wkat4242 3y ago
  Good point. It's just weird that monetisation is still based on this 'stickiness'. If I see an article in the NYT here for example I can't open it, and they want me to sign up for a subscription. Getting a monthly sub might make sense if I'd lived in NY and read it every day, but really for the 2-3 articles per month linked from elsewhere it really does not. It's a bit disingenious. Meanwhile it's not just the NYT I see links from but also the WaPo, atlantic, medium etc etc. I can't subscribe to them all obviously. Yet they all want to. It feels like they are stuck in their old business model without considering how to move forward.
  - Terr_ 3y ago
    > It's just weird that monetisation is still based on this 'stickiness'. I think that's mostly due to limits in payment-systems, laws, and inefficiencies of small transactions. Indirect payment from another group via ads is the workaround. In the late-90's there was a lot of interest around a vision of "micropayments", where a user can easily spend a cent to unlock any news article of their choice, but for various reasons that didn't work. (Also, I don't think cryptocurrencies will rescue it, they have their own problems.) > I can't subscribe to them all obviously. Yet they all want to. I'm confident some people must have already tried to create things like a "One Subscription Alliance" and failed, probably because of a whole bunch of cooperation problems between the different would-be member outlets.
    - rhelz 3y ago
      // in the late 90's ... // Yeah, it was well known even in the early days of the internet that this would be a problem. The pioneers were not entirely unsuccessful in developing methods for which people could get paid---we know who Elon Musk and Peter Thiel are because of PayPal. It was far short of their original goals, but at least they were trying to solve the right problem.

rhelz 3y ago

// The problem is that news services no longer care about the truth. // But...(using Elon Musk's 6 levels of asking "why" methodology) Why do the news services no longer care about the truth? Because they can't make money printing the truth. They can only make money by printing opinions. Why can't they make money printing the truth? Because their old business models have been nuked, and its just too expensive for them to hire those fact checkers and editors. Why do they switch to just printing opinions then?? Because if you can make money printing opinions, you don't need fact checkers anyways. Its hella cheaper to just put "people are asking...." in front of something than checking to see if that something is actually true. Why can you make money printing opinions? Because people would rather watch a mammarily- and rhetorically-blessed person who is very articulately telling them what they already believe. Why do they prefer to hear what they already believe? That way they don't have to admit that those annoying self-righteous guys might have a point.... Why don't they want to admit that somebody else might have a good point? Because nobody likes to lose an argument. *that* is the problem which Australia's laws are trying to fix....no doubt there is a better way, but I can't think of any.....can you?

wkat4242 3y ago
> And if you can make money printing opinions, you don't need fact checkers anyways. That's what I said next, in other words. It's not even about their old business model, it's that the new one nets them more money which is what their shareholders want. Shareholders always trump principles in strict neoliberal states. > that is the problem which Australia's laws are trying to fix....no doubt there is a better way, but I can't think of any.....can you? More state media in my opinion. But I'm more socialist than the US or Australia so mentioning this option is like cursing there. But here in West Europe we've always had those and even multiple for different ideological directions. The problem isn't really the news agencies themselves either. It's that they compete with social media that incite users to 'engage' them and they've come to actually like that. Which is why it worked in the first place. Europe is becoming a lot stricter on social media filtering algorithms and I think this is really hitting the root cause too. Though not directly (or timely) saving the news industry.
- rhelz 3y ago
  More state media is a good idea. If telling the truth is no longer profitable, then some kind of non-profit institution must step up, and the government is a good way to get funding. In the U.S., we have always had NPR as a publicly-funded alternative. It has become a lightning-rod, however, accused of being biased or being propaganda for the deep state, etc. And really, what would be a good proof that it is not biased? We don't really want to anoint a Minister of Truth. Who gets to say what is and what isn't biased?? Private competition is a way, and, when media companies competed on how credible they were, i.e. the most accurate news sources got the most money, it worked pretty good. But now they simply cannot compete on credibility, because its just too damn expensive to be accurate. What to do? I don't know, but I'm not willing to just dismiss Australia's laws out of hand as being axiomatically evil. At least they are trying to do something.
- ambichook 3y ago
  the ABC is ok, it at least provides a baseline for news reporting, although like any media it has its own blind spots. i personally am strongly opposed to forcing browsers and facebook to prop up independent media, though i dont have a better solution ready off the top of my head. my gut says that the solution that was chosen was a poor one and a better alternative should have been searched for

Terr_ 3y ago

> The problem is that news services no longer care about the truth. Hypothesis: The cause is the increase in per-article-discoverability and the decrease in per-publisher stickiness. Nowadays the brand of the source is less important, because people often bypass it by web-searching or social-media referrals. The penalty for falsehoods is lower, and the revenue from click-bait content is higher.

wkat4242 3y ago
Good point. It's just weird that monetisation is still based on this 'stickiness'. If I see an article in the NYT here for example I can't open it, and they want me to sign up for a subscription. Getting a monthly sub might make sense if I'd lived in NY and read it every day, but really for the 2-3 articles per month linked from elsewhere it really does not. It's a bit disingenious. Meanwhile it's not just the NYT I see links from but also the WaPo, atlantic, medium etc etc. I can't subscribe to them all obviously. Yet they all want to. It feels like they are stuck in their old business model without considering how to move forward.
- Terr_ 3y ago
  > It's just weird that monetisation is still based on this 'stickiness'. I think that's mostly due to limits in payment-systems, laws, and inefficiencies of small transactions. Indirect payment from another group via ads is the workaround. In the late-90's there was a lot of interest around a vision of "micropayments", where a user can easily spend a cent to unlock any news article of their choice, but for various reasons that didn't work. (Also, I don't think cryptocurrencies will rescue it, they have their own problems.) > I can't subscribe to them all obviously. Yet they all want to. I'm confident some people must have already tried to create things like a "One Subscription Alliance" and failed, probably because of a whole bunch of cooperation problems between the different would-be member outlets.
  - rhelz 3y ago
    // in the late 90's ... // Yeah, it was well known even in the early days of the internet that this would be a problem. The pioneers were not entirely unsuccessful in developing methods for which people could get paid---we know who Elon Musk and Peter Thiel are because of PayPal. It was far short of their original goals, but at least they were trying to solve the right problem.