Google News Initiative • Hacker News Board

Re: Google News Initiative

#61

Post by awakeasleep » Tue, Mar 20, 2018, 5:37 PM UTC

zoul wrote: post #27

As someone who runs a regional newspaper, I very much doubt that the future of healthy journalism is in the hands of a big company such as Google. We are already thinking hard what to do with the Facebook monopoly, we would be crazy to voluntarily stick our neck into another one.

First, I'm the type of person that thinks the concentration of power from monopolies could be the most pressing issue facing the USA--

But can you explain how having another choice is dangerous? It seems like it'd be a gasp of air in the face of facebook's suffocating presence.

Re: Google News Initiative

#62

Post by fortythirteen » Tue, Mar 20, 2018, 5:42 PM UTC

freehunter wrote: post #49

fortythirteen wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right of center news sources? They've been openly hiding them from the feed through their partnership with Snopes and Politifact. Your uncle sharing InfoWars doesn't count.

>Snopes and Politifact If these are your enemies, your political views might be a little further than "slightly" right of center.

Don't be hyperbolic and put the word "enemies" in my mouth. They are biased sources, though. Those who align with the left typically don't see it, because the organizations align with their biases... and because people rarely read beyond the "truth gauge" at the top of their articles.

Politifact will regularly find a small technicality with a right wing politician and use it to label something "untrue", but give a pass to left wingers. They are run by the Tampa Bay Times, whose editorial board endorses almost exclusively Democrats.

Snopes is just a mom and pop shop whose editorial team has about as much accreditation as your average blogger. The only reason they have any presumed credibility is because of how long the site has been around.

Re: Google News Initiative

#63

Post by joecool1029 » Tue, Mar 20, 2018, 5:43 PM UTC

Moto7451 wrote: post #33

Bartweiss wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there some feedback feature or something you use to get a helpful range of stories? My experience with Google News isn't so much bias or a bubble as uselessness . Source quality, comprehensiveness, and coverage depth seem totally irrelevant, like I'm just getting a feed of every news site a bunch of people clicked on recently. It's the same stuff as Facebook's trending bar, at about the same level of shallow and u…

You can weigh your news sources. I intentionally give a little more weight to sources I don’t always agree with but aren’t obviously biased. Things like fake news spreaders, conspiracy theorist, government propaganda machines, or fair topical sites that simply don’t interest me (mostly Celebrity News and Gossip) get black holed. You can find those sliders in your settings. Also they ask you periodically on the deskto…

>You can weigh your news sources.

Neat site that does it for you: https://www.allsides.com/

Re: Google News Initiative

#64

Post by IAmEveryone » Tue, Mar 20, 2018, 5:44 PM UTC

mudil wrote: post #19

The real problem that Google doesn't want to talk about is its monopoly (with FB) of the digital ad market, to the tune of something like 85% of the total market. As a result, from big to small publishers, specialty publishers, regional publications, etc are all struggling. Here's a read: https://www.medgadget.com/2018/03/google-serfdom-publishing-...

How exactly can two competing companies share a monopoly?

Re: Google News Initiative

#65

Post by smacktoward » Tue, Mar 20, 2018, 5:46 PM UTC

awakeasleep wrote: post #61

zoul wrote: post #27

As someone who runs a regional newspaper, I very much doubt that the future of healthy journalism is in the hands of a big company such as Google. We are already thinking hard what to do with the Facebook monopoly, we would be crazy to voluntarily stick our neck into another one.

First, I'm the type of person that thinks the concentration of power from monopolies could be the most pressing issue facing the USA-- But can you explain how having another choice is dangerous? It seems like it'd be a gasp of air in the face of facebook's suffocating presence.

The hens in the hen-house can be forgiven for not being excited that there are two wolves outside now instead of one.

Re: Google News Initiative

#66

Post by sterban » Tue, Mar 20, 2018, 5:48 PM UTC

aylmao wrote: post #60

sterban wrote: post #28

I got fed up with Google News a year or so ago, over the echo chamber that the news site has become. It motivated me to create https://statesreport.com , with no ads and no tracking.

Nice site! Big fan. Out of curiosity, are you monetizing it in any way? Expect increased traffic after this HN post? How are you making sure we don't empty your pockets?

No, and no plans to. If costs become an issue, I will ask for donations to fund. It's heavily optimized, so I think it can handle the spike!

Re: Google News Initiative

#67

Post by sterban » Tue, Mar 20, 2018, 5:49 PM UTC

switch007 wrote: post #56

sterban wrote: post #28

I got fed up with Google News a year or so ago, over the echo chamber that the news site has become. It motivated me to create https://statesreport.com , with no ads and no tracking.

BTW, the CSS for 'p' has 'sans-serif-light' but I don't have that (or the others) on Chrome/Debian, which results in my default (which happens to be Serif).

Thank you! I will make sure that gets included in future testing.

Re: Google News Initiative

#68

Post by sterban » Tue, Mar 20, 2018, 5:50 PM UTC

e15ctr0n wrote: post #37

sterban wrote: post #28

I got fed up with Google News a year or so ago, over the echo chamber that the news site has become. It motivated me to create https://statesreport.com , with no ads and no tracking.

Great job with the news website! Where do you get the news from and what stack are you using on the website?

The server is written in Go. The news scraper is written in python. I don't have the full list of sites offhand, but I'll try and get back to this comment!

Re: Google News Initiative

#69

Post by jfaucett » Tue, Mar 20, 2018, 5:54 PM UTC

All I want is a resource like "google" for all newspaper articles ever that we have stored anywhere.

Whenever I'm studying a topic, I'll often look up very old or contemporary newspaper writings to see how our perceptions and attitudes regarding the issue have changed over time.

I did this with the civil war and slavery at one point and recently with artificial intelligence. I would highly recommend it for comparing and contrasting your current perspective on a historical event or issue with that time's perspective of the same event or past times' perspectives on that same issue. Its really interesting too to see how the modern perspective is formed slowly over the years up to the current day.

Re: Google News Initiative

#70

Post by olivermarks » Tue, Mar 20, 2018, 5:56 PM UTC

'journalism' and 'news' are obsolete concepts.

A journalist was an employee of a large entity who wrote articles and made videos that complied with the reality and perspective the company they work for wanted to promote. (There are still a few of these employees left working for what's left of these entities)

'News' was selective packaged information to influence and inform the broadest reach, with a goal of selling accompanying advertising messaging based on that reach.