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> Characters in Stephenson’s novel deal with this problem by subscribing to “edit streams” – human-selected news and information that can be considered trustwor

> Characters in Stephenson’s novel deal with this problem by subscribing to “edit streams” – human-selected news and information that can be considered trustworthy. > The drawback is that only the wealthy can afford such bespoke services, leaving most of humanity to consume low-quality, noncurated online content. Why would only the wealthy be able to access that? Since it doesn't actually cost anything to add another person to view such a feed, it would be extremely cheap if viewership is high. If only there were a historical precedent where people were paid by to go out and seek good factual information which was then gathered, edited and put for sale en masse for cheap. Some might still remember this wild concept, they called them "newspapers".

fragmede 2y ago
I mean, that's the case today, with expensive feeds like the Bloomberg terminal subscription being more than most people pay in rent, pricing it out of reach for the plebes and restricting access to the wealthy. the rest of humanity gets access to notably low-quality, noncurated online content free feeds like Reddit and 4chan. so I guess there's a historical precedent for that scenario, as well as this "newspaper" thing.
- moffkalast 2y ago
  Well it depends on the effort required to curate the information divided by the number of people paying for it. Bloomberg is a niche thing that requires a lot of effort to run, so it's gonna be expensive per user. If it's something that everyone wants to read, then it'll be popular enough to be cheap. It's not an altruistic thing either, it just makes sense to price it lower since there's an optimal point where you can extract the most revenue that way. I think we're not really in a phase where disinformation would be that much of a problem yet, HN and Reddit are arguably still sources of very high quality data if you know where to look, so there's no incentive for most people to pay for anything. Especially when it's where most of ad-driven media copies practically all content from these days anyway.
olddustytrail 2y ago
I think you might have your history mixed up. IIRC, newspapers were a thing where a propagandist, known as the "editor-in-chief" would hire a bunch of bitter, failed novelists to write about the events of the day, but slanted according to the whims of the paper's owner. I'm pretty sure that was it...
- moffkalast 2y ago
  Well you're not wrong. As long as there's people in the loop there will be their own opinions injected into their writing. The trick is to find a propagandist or owner that aligns with your views haha. Near impossible these days when Murdoch owns most of them of course.

fragmede 2y ago

I mean, that's the case today, with expensive feeds like the Bloomberg terminal subscription being more than most people pay in rent, pricing it out of reach for the plebes and restricting access to the wealthy. the rest of humanity gets access to notably low-quality, noncurated online content free feeds like Reddit and 4chan. so I guess there's a historical precedent for that scenario, as well as this "newspaper" thing.

moffkalast 2y ago
Well it depends on the effort required to curate the information divided by the number of people paying for it. Bloomberg is a niche thing that requires a lot of effort to run, so it's gonna be expensive per user. If it's something that everyone wants to read, then it'll be popular enough to be cheap. It's not an altruistic thing either, it just makes sense to price it lower since there's an optimal point where you can extract the most revenue that way. I think we're not really in a phase where disinformation would be that much of a problem yet, HN and Reddit are arguably still sources of very high quality data if you know where to look, so there's no incentive for most people to pay for anything. Especially when it's where most of ad-driven media copies practically all content from these days anyway.

olddustytrail 2y ago

I think you might have your history mixed up. IIRC, newspapers were a thing where a propagandist, known as the "editor-in-chief" would hire a bunch of bitter, failed novelists to write about the events of the day, but slanted according to the whims of the paper's owner. I'm pretty sure that was it...

moffkalast 2y ago
Well you're not wrong. As long as there's people in the loop there will be their own opinions injected into their writing. The trick is to find a propagandist or owner that aligns with your views haha. Near impossible these days when Murdoch owns most of them of course.