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Tech Radar quotes Tom's Hardware; Tom's Hardware quotes a tweet. Not a tweet from Southwest, mind you. Not even a tweet from someone who says that they used to
by dsr_ 2y ago
Tech Radar quotes Tom's Hardware; Tom's Hardware quotes a tweet.
Not a tweet from Southwest, mind you. Not even a tweet from someone who says that they used to work for Southwest. Just... a tweet.
- shombaboor 2y agoI just wish there was some type of identifiable credit / penalty system for writing accurately as a news source. And this would include quotes / retweets. Never been a better time to be wrong about everything.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> wish there was some type of identifiable credit / penalty system for writing accurately as a news source Good starting point is if the news is free. A shocking fraction of people get their news from solely free sources.
- mewpmewp2 2y agoAnd why would someone put in effort for free?
- cgriswald 2y agoThis is a misunderstanding of the problem. Effort is made in both cases. In one case effort is made to find verifiable truth as a service. In the other effort is made to provide eyeballs to advertisers.
- kspacewalk2 2y agoWhat's "solely free"? Does the ad-driven model count as free? Why do you think an outlet that works for you will necessarily deliver better quality news that the one that works for advertisers? There are obvious bias downsides to both.
- sxg 2y agoThe ad-driven model does count as free, and it's far less likely to deliver better quality news than a subscription service users pay for. The core metric for ad-driven news sites is maximizing views—it doesn't matter how you get views as long as you get them. This means free sites are heavily incentivized to be the first to break a news story even if the details are wrong or sparse. Sure, they'll issue corrections and updates later, but only a small percentage of the initial viewers will ever see these, and there's essentially zero cost for having made the mistake. The core metric for subscription news sites is minimizing churn. A mistake will cost a subscription site subscribers who have a massive lifetime value. These sites are heavily incentivized to report high quality, accurate news even if they're not the first to break the story.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> What's "solely free"? Does the ad-driven model count as free? Yes, in this context. > Why do you think an outlet that works for you will necessarily deliver better quality news that the one that works for advertisers? I can’t explain the mechanics precisely. But it’s pretty clear when I compare my subscription and non-subscription sources where the quality lies.
- torginus 2y agoYet paying for news is a very weak guarantee of not being fed propaganda/inaccurate reporting. If we held food safety to the same standards as paid news sources are held, people would get salmonella once a week.
- Analemma_ 2y agoYour cure is worse than the disease. The second such a system existed, it would be gamed to hell and back, and nobody would believe it anyway since they'd all angrily insist that "you shouldn't have counted X" or "you should've counted Y more" and it would just turn into a war over who got to control the system and use it to deplatform their enemies.
- andrewflnr 2y agoIt doesn't have to, and indeed shouldn't, be a single system. We'd rather have a handful of independent news checker orgs, maybe some topic-specific ones. Funding remains an exercise for the reader.
- treflop 2y agoThere just isn’t. You just have to read enough of one source to determine your own opinion. Just like with anyone you meet: you are the judge if they are trustworthy, nice, mean, funny, etc. That said, I think tech journalism is the bottom of the barrel. I just feel like they focus more on tech than journalism.
- shombaboor 2y agothe cost of producing bs is too low, back in the day it would at least require time and money to print / distribute.
- mardifoufs 2y agoCommunity notes on twitter is the closest thing to what you're describing I've seen yet. It's been very helpful too imo
- thereddaikon 2y agoA great example of why people don't trust journalists anymore. They don't even perform a basic amount of fact checking before publishing.
- Bud 2y agoIt's unfair to pretend that all journalists have the same level of professionalism (or lack thereof) with regard to sourcing. They don't.
- colechristensen 2y agoArticles from the likes of Tech Radar or Toms Hardware I would trust to a higher standard than a random tweet, but really I wouldn't label them as "real journalists" I question the ethics and standards of the New York Times at least a little at this point so it's not like great journalism is common.
- jxy 2y agoI don't trust any kind of generalization like this, which only serves further disinformation and misinformation. There are bad journalists (if they can be called journalists at all) and good journalists. At this point in history, our only hope lies with diligent reporters from reputable publishers.
- Dalewyn 2y ago[flagged]
- ThrowawayTestr 2y agoWhen's the last time you paid for a newspaper or a subscription to a newspaper?
- ThrowawayTestr 2y agoPeople don't pay for news anymore so we get what we pay for.
- Terr_ 2y agoIt's kind of depressing to think that we have had this world-spanning system of knowledge and "hyperlinks" for decades now, individual pieces that should've enabled an easy chain of attribution/citation...
- Y_Y 2y agoAnd encourage the reader to move away from your site‽ No self respecting PHB could condone such a thing.
- nostromo 2y agoI've started seeing this on Wikipedia. Wikipedia sources an article from a semi-legit source. That semi-legit source either just says "sources" or points to something less-legit, like a Tweet. You can bring new "facts" into existence by just laundering them from lower- and lower-quality sources.
- Arrath 2y agoSource-laundering is a bit catchy, I have to say.