The Free and Open Internet • Hacker News Board

Re: The Free and Open Internet

#51

Post by equalunique » Wed, Feb 13, 2019, 9:47 PM UTC

ceph_ wrote: post #6

equalunique wrote: post #2

I recommend taking a look at the good discussion happening in the comments section of that blog article.

I can't tell if that's sarcasm. What good discussion are you referring to? It's not as bad as what I'd normally see on an article. But I don't see much of value. Just a bunch of people sharing anecdotes as to why the death of the news industry is good/bad/deserved.

It's not sarcasm. I genuinely found the anecdotes which I saw interesting. The current top rated comment there has a good point on the effects of being public vs. private on news organizations. Further down is a comment so long it could be a HN submission on it's own (and FYI, it's not about the death of the news industry).

Re: The Free and Open Internet

#52

Post by marcus_holmes » Thu, Feb 14, 2019, 12:37 AM UTC

zozbot123 wrote: post #35

marcus_holmes wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if the owner of a newspaper decides what it publishes, that newspaper is no longer considered to have "editorial freedom". This is a very important thing to journalists. I can totally understand why it's less hassle all round for Bezos to publish in Medium, or the NYT, or any other publication than the one he owns.

If the "owners" of a newspaper don't have final authority about what it publishes, they aren't the real owners/publishers in the first place; they just provide funding to it, and perhaps own its branding. It's understandable that journalists like "editorial freedom", because it's a de-facto property right. Who wouldn't like that sort of thing?

Having been witness to an entire newsroom resigning because the owner told them what to publish, I can definitely say that it's more than a "like".

Re: The Free and Open Internet

#53

Post by AgentME » Fri, Feb 15, 2019, 1:49 AM UTC

lunchables wrote: post #44

S_A_P wrote: post #37

I don’t see any way to solve the paywall problem except to have Spotify for news/written content.* Even then there are too many hands reaching into my wallet to the point where I just don’t read some things. *Until there is a universal web currency that is low friction to send like some of the crypto currencies.

>*Until there is a universal web currency that is low friction to send like some of the crypto currencies. I see this idea pop up every day now. It blows my mind that we don't have it yet. It seems so obvious, why hasn't someone written it yet? Can someone just pick a cryptocurrency that doesn't have high transaction fees and make a few browser plugins? Add your payment address to ./well-known or something?

The Brave Browser (https://brave.com/) is attempting something like this. (I expect compatible plugins for other browsers could be made in the future if its system takes off.)

There are complications that make this not super straight-forward to pull off. Low fees in cryptocurrency currently is usually done by having low activity. (There are several projects attempting to solve this in a decentralized way, including the Bitcoin Lightning Network and various Ethereum projects.) Then there's privacy issues.