211–220 of 247 posts
If you like this, then you might also like spidr[0] "SPIDR is an AI-powered news aggregator that uses text analysis to group similar news together. The aim is to provide fast access to relevant news from different viewpoints." [0] https://spidr.today
Thanks for posting this. The news aggregator looks really good. I would love to know how you built it. Which text analysis AI did you use to group the similar news together?
For example, in Europe, news stories almost always include a map of the local area. But one could do much better with timelines showing how each article is a step along an unfolding story, empowering readers. In theory, readers can go do all the research themselves, but the cost is quite high. That's almost exactly what the WWW was designed for! It could also includes links to wiki-like pages of every individual related to the story.
But obviously the big question is market. Especially these days, people don't want evidence, only emotional crack. People for whom the information is actually financial valuable pay for accurate information in their niche. So the real challenge is to motivate people to focus on reality instead of their outrage addiction. That's a cultural goal and more likely to be a non-profit enterprise. :(
Good luck to them if course, but I am not sure this will work. Couple of reasons come to my mind: 1. How will I know that news have been reviewed by qualified people? Technically this should be news agency/source's job. 2. By the time the score will depict the news' quality, the damage may be already done. 3. RT is based on people's opinions, but news should be fact checked. What I think it should do, is to score the…
Yep. Rating news is a terrible idea. The news should ideally be as objective as possible (or otherwise it's called "Fake News"), they don't always come out as a popular / most highly rated one. Movies, on the other hand, are highly subjective. Elon Must has a similar idea where he wanted to rate journalists but later he gave up.[1] https://www.inc.com/brian-hart/elon-musk-wants-to-let-public... Ultimately, you as an…
This just seems like the absolute worst place to position yourself in the modern world.
PS: Also, aside from all the politics... think about the swarms of bots ad companies would hire to upvote their sponsored content...
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It would provide a common prior for any empirical claims. Scott Alexander puts it very well here: A democracy provides a Schelling point, … an option which might or might not be the best, but which is not too bad and which everyone agrees on in order to stop fighting. … In the six hundred fifty years between the Norman Conquest and the neutering of the English monarchy, Wikipedia lists about twenty revolts and civil…
The problem is that there isn't a universally trusted arbiter for the final result. Prediction markets can be useful when what is being predicted can be objectively verified in the future but if something like "Will ObamaCare destroy the economy?" was the question in 2009, in 2019 half the country will tell you it did destroy the economy, the other half will say it didn't.
Perhaps you're a Koch brother and decide to inject billions of dollars into such a question due to the financial payoff you could reap if it comes true. I think such a market suffers from the efficiency created by a price point difference when the result of the prediction can effect your income - if a particular policy discussion will cost you 5 billion dollars then you can, internally, play with that cost and the likelihood of being able to tip a market. If you can guarantee a positive outcome by investing 4.5 billion then there is a rational motivation to do so.
Good luck to them if course, but I am not sure this will work. Couple of reasons come to my mind: 1. How will I know that news have been reviewed by qualified people? Technically this should be news agency/source's job. 2. By the time the score will depict the news' quality, the damage may be already done. 3. RT is based on people's opinions, but news should be fact checked. What I think it should do, is to score the…
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Is politics not a reason somebody might decide to not see a movie? If Mel Gibson produces a great new movie, then during the promotion gets drunk again and makes another racially charged rant to the police, wouldn't that dissuade people from wanting to see the movie? I know plenty of people who never forgave him for the first rant! Why do movies use famous actors anyway? Not all movies do of course, but many do. Why?…
Absolutely people take politics into account when deciding to see a movie. I don't think there is anything wrong with that at all. I suspect that RT was surprised when that feature was used the way it was. Politics was probably not what they are thinking about. They are just trying to provide a review aggregator. I doubt they really though through the implication of what "I want to see this movie" might mean.
Rather than create an RT for news, just create a better news outlet please. A new form of news would be the more revolutionary startup imo. I think any RT style news review site will end up being regarded much as Politifact is today -- valued only by those who agree with its ratings.
what would you like to see in this new news outlet?
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> That even happened on RT for the Captain Marvel movie because of the female heroine, many "snowflakes" got offended and gave a movie that wasn't even out yet bad ratings. Alternatively, they were using the "Want to See" feature on Rotten Tomatoes exactly as it was intended to be used. People didn't like aspects of the marketing campaign for Captain Marvel and made their opinions known using a tool Rotten Tomatoes p…
It's strange though... there are so many movies coming out all the time. Way more than you could ever see, even if you wanted to. What drives a person to go to RT to explicitly say "I don't want to see this movie". They don't do that with all the other movies they don't want to see. It's all about politics, and has nothing to do with the quality of the movie. I haven't seen it, and probably won't, but I have weird ta…
Good luck to them if course, but I am not sure this will work. Couple of reasons come to my mind: 1. How will I know that news have been reviewed by qualified people? Technically this should be news agency/source's job. 2. By the time the score will depict the news' quality, the damage may be already done. 3. RT is based on people's opinions, but news should be fact checked. What I think it should do, is to score the…
Yep. Rating news is a terrible idea. The news should ideally be as objective as possible (or otherwise it's called "Fake News"), they don't always come out as a popular / most highly rated one. Movies, on the other hand, are highly subjective. Elon Must has a similar idea where he wanted to rate journalists but later he gave up.[1] https://www.inc.com/brian-hart/elon-musk-wants-to-let-public... Ultimately, you as an…
> Rating news is a terrible idea.
Certainly, Stackoverflow-type systems do have their benefits, but those benefits are for a very narrow use-case and there's an awful flip-side that the rhetoric and rules in stackoverflow have ever-increasing perverse incentives to reward strange, persnickety behavior. It's great if you're missing some pieces of information here-and-there, but it's awful to use as a tutorial or as a way to understand subject-matter in a holistic fashion.
The idea that you can have any kind of self-policing or crowd-sourced mediation of journalistic "facts" vs "baloney" is a pipe-dream.
IMHO, the problem is not whether or not a piece of information is "a fact" but rather what other facts are missing, and context of these facts as a whole, and the intention behind the entities brokering facts on your behalf. It's all very easy to point out horrendous bias, and outright lying (just watch "Fox and Friends" for a few minutes), but what about a set of facts which is incomplete? That's just as bad as no facts and it has a name: "disinformation".
What we need as consumers of journalism is not necessarily "just the facts" but intelligent and rational analysis that can function even with incomplete information, that draws on not just "available facts" but also a historical basis, that is brave enough to adjust itself as reality warrants. This is necessarily and intrinsically subjective and it will often NOT be recognized as true and be, at times, incredibly unpopular.