Goodbye, Denver Post. Hello, Blockchain • Hacker News Board

Re: Goodbye, Denver Post. Hello, Blockchain

#31

Post by TangoTrotFox » Sun, Jun 17, 2018, 7:06 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #30

TangoTrotFox wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And who exactly do you think owns the current media companies in the US?

> who exactly do you think owns the current media companies in the US? Point being we can answer this question. If you put ownership on the blockchain, we can’t. It’s exactly what we have today, but worse.

This is shifting the goal posts. The point is we have a media that's already well under the thumb of 'rich people', to use the phrase of the person I originally responded to. And so comparing any idea to an ideal of an independent media free of this control is rather disingenuous.

For your shift, is anonymizing control in exchange for a clear ledger of control a bad deal? I'm not sure. Seems like an interesting idea at least, and given the current state of our media I'm more than happy to see any idea trying to change the game.

Re: Goodbye, Denver Post. Hello, Blockchain

#32

Post by ilikehurdles » Sun, Jun 17, 2018, 7:11 PM UTC

cloakandswagger wrote: post #29

pudo wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't emphasise this enough. Any system that lets (rich) people vote on what the truth is cannot be called journalism. It is simply not how facts work. This is also why Elon Musks recent initiative ("Pravduh"?) has all the populist appeal in the world, yet contains the risk to do serious damage to journalistic independence.

Journalists don't seem to need any help in damaging their reputation and the public's trust in them. These alternative distribution schemes seem to be a response to the bias and selective reporting done over the last two years.

Eh, I would call very few people at the Murdoch’s and Mercer’s media conglomerates and the like journalists, and while they’ve significantly amplified extremism in the last two years, they’ve never been considered legitimate journalistic organizations like the New Yorker or the Washington Post.

Re: Goodbye, Denver Post. Hello, Blockchain

#33

Post by pudo » Sun, Jun 17, 2018, 7:24 PM UTC

ilikehurdles wrote: post #32

cloakandswagger wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Journalists don't seem to need any help in damaging their reputation and the public's trust in them. These alternative distribution schemes seem to be a response to the bias and selective reporting done over the last two years.

Eh, I would call very few people at the Murdoch’s and Mercer’s media conglomerates and the like journalists, and while they’ve significantly amplified extremism in the last two years, they’ve never been considered legitimate journalistic organizations like the New Yorker or the Washington Post.

WSJ is a pretty renowned newspaper. Coincidentally, they published the Theranos investigation which probably cost Murdoch $100mn.

I'm somewhat entertained by the posters in this thread shitting on media organisations. You need to understand: the business model for a whole pillar of democracy is gone.

$5 and your sarcastic comment will buy you a cafe latte, but the very last thing journalism needs more of is disruption. It's been disrupted every quarter for ten years straight and now reporters in Colorado are clinging to the goddamn blockchain because it's the last shitty hope left.

You can propose that journalism needs to reinvent itself, but this is not an original insight. Smart people have been trying for years, and it's really hard to make a public good sustainable on the web.

So if you're sitting in a really nicely paid high-tech job somewhere in SV, realise that you are the origin of this problem. A problem that causes damage to democracy in numerous countries. Maybe a little less arrogance?

Re: Goodbye, Denver Post. Hello, Blockchain

#34

Post by sulam » Sun, Jun 17, 2018, 7:47 PM UTC

pudo wrote: post #33

ilikehurdles wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, I would call very few people at the Murdoch’s and Mercer’s media conglomerates and the like journalists, and while they’ve significantly amplified extremism in the last two years, they’ve never been considered legitimate journalistic organizations like the New Yorker or the Washington Post.

WSJ is a pretty renowned newspaper. Coincidentally, they published the Theranos investigation which probably cost Murdoch $100mn. I'm somewhat entertained by the posters in this thread shitting on media organisations. You need to understand: the business model for a whole pillar of democracy is gone. $5 and your sarcastic comment will buy you a cafe latte, but the very last thing journalism needs more of is disruptio…

FWIW I subscribe to the WSJ, NYT, WaPo, Economist, and New Yorker. I buy books and music (I think I might be one of the few left who still buys albums despite listening to them on Spotify, too).

This move is very concerning to me. The best I can say about it is that if people are willing to buy coverage, hopefully that will directly pay for more coverage in general (a rising tide lifts all journalism). But it clearly removes the editorial independence that has been THE hallmark of serious journalism since serious journalism existed.

Re: Goodbye, Denver Post. Hello, Blockchain

#35

Post by hk__2 » Sun, Jun 17, 2018, 7:49 PM UTC

pishpash wrote: post #11

prolikewhoa wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even after reading the previous comments in this thread? I'm really not seeing any benefit, just a shifting of company shares and maybe the benefit of all transactions publicly available on the blockchain, but some anonymity would make that seemingly useless.

Unrelated side benefits include content archival and anti-censorship. I don't think they had those in mind though.

> Unrelated side benefits include content archival and anti-censorship

I fail to see how any of those is relevant to the use of a blockchain. Mirroring a newspaper’s website gives you content archival, which in turns gives you censorship protection (unless the censor can attack all mirrors). A blockchain gives you those advantages because it relies on mirroring (the transactions).

Re: Goodbye, Denver Post. Hello, Blockchain

#36

Post by Moodles » Sun, Jun 17, 2018, 7:57 PM UTC

I propose a new rule of the internet, much like the rule of "if you can think of it, there's porn for it." If you can think of it, there's a alt coin for it.

It's genuinely difficult. One friend suggested "a coin for space travel". Nope. Mars coin is a thing. What about a coin for students? Nope. A coin for Kanye West. Nope. A coin for porn? Nope, of course that already exists. There's even a coin for keeping track of blockchains.

Re: Goodbye, Denver Post. Hello, Blockchain

#37

Post by nrclark » Sun, Jun 17, 2018, 8:04 PM UTC

What makes this different than a co-op, aside from the "definitely not a scam guys, honest!" overtones of selling unregulated stock disguised as tokens? That and hosting everything "on the blockchain" for some inscrutable reason?

And what does hosting news "on the blockchain" even mean in any practical sense? That I'll have to install a crypto-mining client just to read their articles? Or that they won't use normal webservers to host their content?

Re: Goodbye, Denver Post. Hello, Blockchain

#38

Post by joejerryronnie » Sun, Jun 17, 2018, 8:09 PM UTC

pudo wrote: post #33

ilikehurdles wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, I would call very few people at the Murdoch’s and Mercer’s media conglomerates and the like journalists, and while they’ve significantly amplified extremism in the last two years, they’ve never been considered legitimate journalistic organizations like the New Yorker or the Washington Post.

WSJ is a pretty renowned newspaper. Coincidentally, they published the Theranos investigation which probably cost Murdoch $100mn. I'm somewhat entertained by the posters in this thread shitting on media organisations. You need to understand: the business model for a whole pillar of democracy is gone. $5 and your sarcastic comment will buy you a cafe latte, but the very last thing journalism needs more of is disruptio…

You should point your snark cannon at each person who chooses to read a journalist created piece of content over the web without paying for it (as I'm assuming you just did with this article). It's very easy to point to those "wealthy tech bros in Silicon Valley" for all of society's ills when, for the most part, the real culprit is staring at you from the mirror.

Re: Goodbye, Denver Post. Hello, Blockchain

#39

Post by a1369209993 » Sun, Jun 17, 2018, 8:11 PM UTC

Moodles wrote: post #36

I propose a new rule of the internet, much like the rule of "if you can think of it, there's porn for it." If you can think of it, there's a alt coin for it. It's genuinely difficult. One friend suggested "a coin for space travel". Nope. Mars coin is a thing. What about a coin for students? Nope. A coin for Kanye West. Nope. A coin for porn? Nope, of course that already exists. There's even a coin for keeping track o…

A coin for Cymothoa exigua. COBOLCoin. A coin based on MD2 hashing for proof-of-work.

Re: Goodbye, Denver Post. Hello, Blockchain

#40

Post by jancsika » Sun, Jun 17, 2018, 8:11 PM UTC

cloakandswagger wrote: post #29

pudo wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't emphasise this enough. Any system that lets (rich) people vote on what the truth is cannot be called journalism. It is simply not how facts work. This is also why Elon Musks recent initiative ("Pravduh"?) has all the populist appeal in the world, yet contains the risk to do serious damage to journalistic independence.

Journalists don't seem to need any help in damaging their reputation and the public's trust in them. These alternative distribution schemes seem to be a response to the bias and selective reporting done over the last two years.

OP didn't say anything about journalists' reputations and the public trust in them. He said something about journalistic independence.

For example, Seymour Hersh clearly possessed journalistic independence in his story on the SEAL team assassination of bin Laden. However, at least initially, public response to his story was lukewarm and the Obama administration in particular and the press broadly spent a lot of time and pages trying to discredit the story. In this-- and many other cases-- public trust and reputation is orthogonal to journalistic independence.

Not that I disagree with your two sentences. Clearly this is an attempt to somehow "technologize" better journalism given the low quality of reporting in the run up to the 2016 election.

But if you take "journalistic independence" as your input and reflexively give "reputation and public trust" as your output, something is broken in your journalism parser.