Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google to add 'news feed' to website and app

bbc.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 189 posts

Re: Google to add 'news feed' to website and app

#121

Post by dsfyu404ed »

aphextron wrote: post #11

The "newsfeed" pattern is one of the worst ideas humanity has ever had. Never has it been so easy to manipulate public opinion at will. 10 years ago there was a such thing as standards in journalism. Now anypoliticalblog.com's headline has been promoted to the equal status of an actual news organisation by means of the implicit legitimacy of appearing in a news feed. This insanity has reached a crescendo with the off…

What rock have you been living under? You could put one TV on MSNBC and one on Fox News in 1997 and 2017 and it would be about the same result.

I'd also like to remind you, it's not just quality of coverage that matters, it's what you cover.

Re: Google to add 'news feed' to website and app

#122

Post by fwn »

andygates wrote: post #104
chartreusek wrote: post #23

Didn't they try basically this before, then had it fail and discontinue in the form of iGoogle(2005-2013)? The idea of google going back to that is just nuts. At least DuckDuckGo has got the search page concept right.

They definitely discontinued it, but that doesn't mean it failed. What do you think made them kill it? At the time, it felt like textbook Google capriciousness (see Reader, etc).

I expected it to be a strategic push towards their more interactive content aggregation feature built into Google+.

Re: Google to add 'news feed' to website and app

#123

Post by CM30 »

lucasverra wrote: post #117
tormeh wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, the UK press. How did that happen? Why do the British like that sort of thing? And I'd also add that the Greek press is also garbage. They don't turn a profit at all and are simply propaganda for their owner's point of view. Their owners usually being family-owned conglomerates. It's as if the Kochs started their own newspaper. I get the impression this is actually pretty common in many countries, particularly ea…

South America too I find LeMondediplomatique (in all it's countries regions) to be a light in the darkness of propaganda. Check it out

Makes you wonder if countries with good quality newspapers and media outlets are the exception rather than the rule.

Maybe the US just kind of lucked out there.

Re: Google to add 'news feed' to website and app

#124

Post by hyperdunc »

panarky wrote: post #116
hyperdunc wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Actual news organizations" don't exist in the sense we'd like. They're all agenda driven and constantly lie by omission. Breitbart is shamelessly pro-Trump. They will publish stories that others won't but also won't publish anything counter to their narrative. The Guardian, which someone else mentioned, is massively left-leaning and is also very selective about what they cover. Their articles are often poorly though…

This is false equivalence. It's comforting to think that Breitbart and The Guardian are equally biased, and if you average them together, you get the truth. But I'd challenge you to find headlines on The Guardian that match Breitbart stories like these: "Pro-Nazi Roots of Planned Parenthood Revealed" "The Solution to Online Harassment is Simple: Women Should Log Off" "Huma Abedin Most Likely a Saudi Spy With Deep Ina…

It'd be more productive to compare the substance of articles and not their clickbait headlines. For example that last headline in your list is incendiary but the points it makes are well cited.

From memory here are a couple of Guardian headlines:

"Your worst nightmare: a successful Donald Trump Presidency"

"Have we reached peak beard?"

And here's a couple they're serving up right now:

"'Soon you'll be able to afford a BBC man' / Emily Maitlis mocks pay gap at conference"

"'Bigger than yours' / Randy Newman writes song about Donald Trump's penis"

"Peter Dutton's new mega department will streamline dog whistling and fear whipping"

Not exactly indicative of unbiased, quality journalism. But never mind, because how much do cherry picked headlines really tell us?

Re: Google to add 'news feed' to website and app

#125

Post by Jedi72 »

pryelluw wrote: post #12

Took long enough. The next step will be adding a Google+ integrated commenting system. But why? Attention (which is Google's main product) is now captivated by the social networks. Google must adapt or lose market share. What is interesting is how they have not been able to really break into social. What about Google makes it so difficult for them to do just that?

It's very important that people working on things like human social interaction be able to do things like invert binary trees. They only hire the best.

Re: Google to add 'news feed' to website and app

#126

Post by anon1385 »

xg15 wrote: post #93
BigJono wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I follow. It sounds like you're blaming blogs and online media for the decline in credibility of newspapers. Newspapers aren't credible anymore because they continuously make the conscious decision to run bullshit stories full of twisted truths in the pursuit of sales, as they have always done. The only reason they had any credibility before is because people blindly accepted what they said without the t…

> Newspapers aren't credible anymore because they continuously make the conscious decision to run bullshit stories full of twisted truths in the pursuit of sales, as they have always done. Sources for that claim please? Of course there were always plenty of papers that operated like that (tabloids etc), but I doubt they were as influential in main political discussion as e.g. Fox News seems to be today.

>I doubt they were as influential in main political discussion as e.g. Fox News seems to be today.

Why do you assume that? Absolute garbage tabloids have been influencing elections and dominating mainstream political discourse in western countries for decades[1]. In the UK an entire political ideology was created to try and work around the influence of right wing mass media (spoiler: the answer was allowing media barons to dictate policy).

If anything tabloid influence is lower today than in the past. Compare the result of the 1992 UK general election with the 2017 one.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_The_Sun_Wot_Won_It

Re: Google to add 'news feed' to website and app

#127

Post by hyperdunc »

te_chris wrote: post #119
hyperdunc wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't really equate them, I just used as them as examples since they'd both already been mentioned. Also, don't you think that suggesting Breitbart is worse than the Guardian might point to your own bias? The Guardian is designed to look less like a tabloid, which gives the appearance of it being more honest - but is it really a less biased source of news? It's very hard to judge such things. I've been reading the…

So because you don't like what they write, they're biased?

That's effectively what is happening with media consumption. Beause of special interests and ideologies, it's very hard to tell how biased or honest information really is without doing a lot of research.

Ideally, journalists would do that research for us and present the information as objectively as possible. And we would trust them. But doing that takes a lot of time and doesn't result in a lot of clicks.

Re: Google to add 'news feed' to website and app

#128

Post by pluma »

CM30 wrote: post #123
lucasverra wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

South America too I find LeMondediplomatique (in all it's countries regions) to be a light in the darkness of propaganda. Check it out

Makes you wonder if countries with good quality newspapers and media outlets are the exception rather than the rule. Maybe the US just kind of lucked out there.

Wait. You think the US has good quality newspapers and media outlets?

I can't think of one "reputable" US news outlet that hasn't knowingly spread misinformation or half-truths at least once over the past year.

The "good" sources are generally the least bad ones that happen to confirm your biases more than the rest.

Re: Google to add 'news feed' to website and app

#129

Post by anon1385 »

hyperdunc wrote: post #66
aphextron wrote: post #11

The "newsfeed" pattern is one of the worst ideas humanity has ever had. Never has it been so easy to manipulate public opinion at will. 10 years ago there was a such thing as standards in journalism. Now anypoliticalblog.com's headline has been promoted to the equal status of an actual news organisation by means of the implicit legitimacy of appearing in a news feed. This insanity has reached a crescendo with the off…

"Actual news organizations" don't exist in the sense we'd like. They're all agenda driven and constantly lie by omission. Breitbart is shamelessly pro-Trump. They will publish stories that others won't but also won't publish anything counter to their narrative. The Guardian, which someone else mentioned, is massively left-leaning and is also very selective about what they cover. Their articles are often poorly though…

>The Guardian, which someone else mentioned, is massively left-leaning

It really isn't. It's a liberal paper not a left wing one. That's not a theoretical distinction; you just need to look at their coverage of the UK Labour party over the last 2 years to see that.

It does publish a range of people in the opinion pages, including conservatives and socialists, but the reporters and most importantly editors are nearly all liberals. That's what informs which articles get published and which anonymous "senior labour party insider" they quote in the headlines and front page news stories.

Re: Google to add 'news feed' to website and app

#130

Post by 7952 »

hyperdunc wrote: post #99
michaelmrose wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly don't believe breitbart and the guardian are equally bad. There have always been varying degrees of bias and different degrees of standards. The right spins this as everyone is equally biased in order to justify there readers picking their own alternative facts to justify whatever positions they hold however improbable.

You may be correct but surely you recognize that the left can just as easily be accused of the same bias you attribute to the right? The real problem is diverging narratives and very little constructive communication between. Both sides have very valid concerns that aren't understood by the other.

It is possible to be biased and still behave in a fair minded way. In some media the trend is towards intentional misreporting to drive a particular agenda. This does not exactly promote constructive communication. And when the publication aligns with your own views it is easier to forgive.
Post reply on HN