4 ms·

Bad for who though? Isn't it good for the writers? More people viewing the content? Isn't it good for the users? A better experience?

by bobbles 11y ago

throwaway2048 11y ago
ah yes, thankfully facebook has only our best interests at heart.
joelrunyon 11y ago
Bad for publishers. Continuing to relinquish control of their content & platform. Users - I'd rather not get my information from facebook.
Crito 11y ago
Bad for society. Accurate metrics seem to drive down the quality of publications. Websites with near-omniscient metrics often find that the best way to drive traffic is to deliberately produce shit-tier articles that drive clicks through controversy or pandering. In the absence of accurate metrics, the writers/editors are forced to simply try their best to produce the best quality material. Their notion of what the "best quality" will be is informed by their background, generally set at universities. Writers who are not driven by metrics will push on society. Writers who are driven by metrics will be pushed by society.
- smil 11y ago
  It's not the metrics, it's advertising as a business model.
  - Crito 11y ago
    What other business models for written articles are driven off these sort of fine-grain metrics?
- btown 11y ago
  > Writers who are not driven by metrics will push on society. Writers who are driven by metrics will be pushed by society. It's intriguing to think of this in the context of Plato's _Republic_. A simplistic conception of the philosopher-king might interpolate the positive relationship between knowledge and justice, and argue that the more knowledge one can obtain of reality, the better a leader one would be. Such a leader would seek out every metric available, right? But, as in the Allegory of the Cave [1], where people might become very skilled at interpreting shadows but never recognize the true Form of the hidden objects casting the shadows, metrics are only good when they convey the Truth... which, in the case of publication quality, may indeed be that justice is ill-served by journalistic pandering, and that metrics are inherently short-term. Of course, Plato was also an advocate of censorship in the very same work [2], so any reading should be taken with a grain of salt. It's very interesting, though, that the idea of an "uncanny valley" of knowledge, of wrongly optimizing on a subset of the Truth, is an idea millennia old. [1] http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0168%3Abook%3D7 http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%... [2] http://www.iep.utm.edu/republic/#SH1c http://www.iep.utm.edu/republic/#SH1c
marcosdumay 11y ago
No, it's not good for the writers, nor is it good for the readers. Facebook has set a trap, and is baiting readers and writers with some short term gains. At the long term, the only party that this is good for is Facebook itself. That said, it's doomed to happen, sooner or later. I really don't know what to think about those initiatives anymore. Maybe what's important is that we keep an open internet, not that we keep the Internet open.

Bad for who though? Isn't it good for the writers? More people viewing the content? Isn't it good for the users? A better experience?

by bobbles 11y ago

Bad for who though? Isn't it good for the writers? More people viewing the content? Isn't it good for the users? A better experience?

throwaway2048 11y ago

ah yes, thankfully facebook has only our best interests at heart.

joelrunyon 11y ago

Bad for publishers. Continuing to relinquish control of their content & platform. Users - I'd rather not get my information from facebook.

Crito 11y ago

Bad for society. Accurate metrics seem to drive down the quality of publications. Websites with near-omniscient metrics often find that the best way to drive traffic is to deliberately produce shit-tier articles that drive clicks through controversy or pandering. In the absence of accurate metrics, the writers/editors are forced to simply try their best to produce the best quality material. Their notion of what the "best quality" will be is informed by their background, generally set at universities. Writers who are not driven by metrics will push on society. Writers who are driven by metrics will be pushed by society.

smil 11y ago
It's not the metrics, it's advertising as a business model.
- Crito 11y ago
  What other business models for written articles are driven off these sort of fine-grain metrics?
btown 11y ago
> Writers who are not driven by metrics will push on society. Writers who are driven by metrics will be pushed by society. It's intriguing to think of this in the context of Plato's _Republic_. A simplistic conception of the philosopher-king might interpolate the positive relationship between knowledge and justice, and argue that the more knowledge one can obtain of reality, the better a leader one would be. Such a leader would seek out every metric available, right? But, as in the Allegory of the Cave [1], where people might become very skilled at interpreting shadows but never recognize the true Form of the hidden objects casting the shadows, metrics are only good when they convey the Truth... which, in the case of publication quality, may indeed be that justice is ill-served by journalistic pandering, and that metrics are inherently short-term. Of course, Plato was also an advocate of censorship in the very same work [2], so any reading should be taken with a grain of salt. It's very interesting, though, that the idea of an "uncanny valley" of knowledge, of wrongly optimizing on a subset of the Truth, is an idea millennia old. [1] http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0168%3Abook%3D7 http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%... [2] http://www.iep.utm.edu/republic/#SH1c http://www.iep.utm.edu/republic/#SH1c

marcosdumay 11y ago

No, it's not good for the writers, nor is it good for the readers. Facebook has set a trap, and is baiting readers and writers with some short term gains. At the long term, the only party that this is good for is Facebook itself. That said, it's doomed to happen, sooner or later. I really don't know what to think about those initiatives anymore. Maybe what's important is that we keep an open internet, not that we keep the Internet open.