I would love for someone to take an investigative look at how the stock market is not working for society in many ways. I can't help but feel that as the pressure of being a listed stock weighs on listed companies, their value sets change and not in ways beneficial to "greater" society.
News Site to Investigate Big Tech, Helped by Craigslist Founder
31–40 of 65 posts
Re: News Site to Investigate Big Tech, Helped by Craigslist Founder
#32Junk food/fast food might be a better villain than canned food: one could probably live perfectly healthily on canned food alone for decades if need be, but the same cannot really be said of junk food/fast food.
Re: News Site to Investigate Big Tech, Helped by Craigslist Founder
#33This looks awesome. >"The site will explore three broad investigative categories: how profiling software discriminates against the poor and other vulnerable groups; internet health and infections like bots, scams and misinformation; and the awesome power of the tech companies. The Markup will release all its stories under a creative commons license so other organizations can republish them, as ProPublica does." Also,…
This is awesome and looking forward to it!
The one thing that is bugging me is - yet another project that depends on the generosity of a rich person, a project that is so important and vital.
Re: News Site to Investigate Big Tech, Helped by Craigslist Founder
#34I'd like to see a serious investigation and discussion around the recommendation engines used to rank content added here. Something is seriously wrong with youtube's algorithm, whether in the technical implementation or how it deals with spam/unintended consequences. Kids watching cartoons get recommended messed up stuff (e.g. https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/65rkxv/what_i... ), watch a single Jordan Pe…
> I'd like to see a serious investigation and discussion around the recommendation engines [...] Something is seriously wrong with youtube's algorithm
I had a pretty surreal experience last year. My youtube use is almost exclusively for learning; coding, maths, astronomy, science, and so on. Recommendations were never great for me, usually recommending videos I've already watched. At some point I inadvertently clicked a link to a teenage girl's vlog, and watched maybe 5 seconds of it before closing. Instantly half of my recommendations were teenage girl's vlogs. I then misclicked a video in recommendations a few days later, and it turned into exclusively teenage girl vlogs. A year later, it's slightly recovered, but I still get them.
I am pretty confident their recommendation would not be overrun with science if they inadvertantly click a video.
Re: News Site to Investigate Big Tech, Helped by Craigslist Founder
#35> The site will explore three broad investigative categories: how profiling software discriminates against the poor and other vulnerable groups; internet health and infections like bots, scams and misinformation; and the awesome power of the tech companies. Shouldn't they prove "if" software discriminates before figuring out "how"? It seems like they already have a conclusion in mind which rarely produces quality res…
I'm not sure why you've been downvoted for this. Although I'm inclined to agree with their starting position it's hard to deny that quality investigative journalism shouldn't be about proving a preexisting hypothesis.
Re: News Site to Investigate Big Tech, Helped by Craigslist Founder
#36This looks awesome. >"The site will explore three broad investigative categories: how profiling software discriminates against the poor and other vulnerable groups; internet health and infections like bots, scams and misinformation; and the awesome power of the tech companies. The Markup will release all its stories under a creative commons license so other organizations can republish them, as ProPublica does." Also,…
This is awesome and looking forward to it! The one thing that is bugging me is - yet another project that depends on the generosity of a rich person, a project that is so important and vital.
Five or so years ago I started a project to make it possible to crowdfund investigative journalism called Uncoverage. We launched with a review in the Times and things looked rosy. The premise: why should rich people - or editors - be the ones deciding what gets investigated? A couple of other projects have made a run at this too. The problem seems to be that the value proposition of “getting investigation” is too abstract for most people, and we’ve all been trained that information, and journalism, is free. The project flopped, as did its competitors like Beacon. The more recently launched Wikitribune is still going. The day we wake up as a society to the power of paying collectively for investigation into what may be hurting us instead of waiting for it to be done for us by the rich, nonprofits or thinly stretched newspapers will be a very important one. I wish I knew how to bring that about.
Re: News Site to Investigate Big Tech, Helped by Craigslist Founder
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, my comment is based primarily on the narrow scope of the publication, which to my mind, as a lifelong publisher of online and offline media, seems excessive. If they were using an ICO to raise the same amount of money for the same project scope I'd also think that excessive. As for my own project, we have a much wider goal (to convert all the world's news -- past and present -- into data that can be used as a pla…
Like someone else said it costs big money to hire people and retain them over 10 years. They have a reasonable startup objective where as your startup is taking advantage of naive investors that want to invest in X meets blockchain. None of the copy on your site communicates that you have even a basic understanding of blockchain. You can't throw blockchain at "fake news" and expect a different outcome.
>your startup is taking advantage of naive investors that want to invest in X meets blockchain.
False. Please tell me another technology that will allow us to build a decentralised, failure-tolerant, censorship- and tamper-resistant archive of all the world's news, that has been converted into data and independently verified, and that anyone can use to create news applications.
To avoid any accusation of threadjacking, if you'd like to discuss NewsBlocks further, please do so on the 'Show HN' page page: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17947364
Re: News Site to Investigate Big Tech, Helped by Craigslist Founder
#38Re: News Site to Investigate Big Tech, Helped by Craigslist Founder
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
And during that time there's no revenue? I'm not sure why I'm being downvoted: as a publisher of multiple online and offline projects it seems an extravagant amount for a publication that has a very narrow scope.
> And during that time there's no revenue? Yep. Removing ads and removing revenue removes conflicts.
Unless they're investigating Craigslist, perhaps?
Re: News Site to Investigate Big Tech, Helped by Craigslist Founder
#40The comparison to canned food is interesting. It probably resonates with people better than comparing the tech industry to cigarettes. Few people now remember how beloved cigarettes were in their heyday.
I wonder if anybody could give me a link to read on canned food issues. I come from Russia and there were non in USSR and Russia after USSR dissolved, what were the issues in the US?