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Credder Wants to Create an Equivalent to “Rotten Tomatoes” for News

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Re: Credder Wants to Create an Equivalent to “Rotten Tomatoes” for News

#231

Post by amanaplanacanal »

bufferoverflow wrote: post #67
ddebernardy wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's the yardstick, one could just as well open the NYT, the WP, the WSJ, or [your favorite reputable newspaper] and call it a day -- no RT clone needed.

A large percentage of the population doesn't consider NYT, WP, WSJ reputable. They are all extremely biased by their politics. I can't even name a single news source that I'd call reputable and that I trust. That's why I like reading multiple sources on the subject plus comments on Reddit/HN.

Actually, if you just read the news stories, and not the opinion articles from all three of those, you are probably doing pretty well. They can get something wrong once in a while, sure, but it's mostly good.

Television news is going to probably be not quite as good, just because they can't cover as much as a newspaper in only 30-60 minutes. Again, just the news, not the opinion stuff.

If you just take all of it in uncritically, and especially if you don't pay attention to what is labeled news vs opinion, you're going to end up believing a lot of things which probably aren't true.

Re: Credder Wants to Create an Equivalent to “Rotten Tomatoes” for News

#232

Post by unityByFreedom »

ilaksh wrote: post #226

People in this thread do not seem to appreciate the real threat to society that censorship and propaganda pose. A widely used news rating site will be used to suppress political dissent and alternate views. Maybe take a look at history and the world. Do you think that Chinese authorities would like a tool installed on everyone's computer that could rate the trustworthiness of a news article or site? Of course they wo…

I'm with you.

Re: Credder Wants to Create an Equivalent to “Rotten Tomatoes” for News

#233

Post by feanaro »

devy wrote: post #145
rooam-dev wrote: post #64

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…

You're all almost never purely doing your own research, though. There isn't enough time for that. It's a sliding scale of deciding where to stop and how much to take for granted and who to take it from.

This is why the problem isn't "doing your own research" vs "trusting someone". It's always both; the magic is in choosing which at each particular step when finding things out.

Re: Credder Wants to Create an Equivalent to “Rotten Tomatoes” for News

#234

Post by hopler »

rooam-dev wrote: post #64

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…

Facts are outside the realm of humans, unreachable. Humans can only have observations, hearsay, and opinions about what the facts are. That's why we have scientific opinions and judicial opinions. A statistical analysis with a confidence interval or a p-value is a measurement of how strongly someone holds an opinion based on their observations.

Re: Credder Wants to Create an Equivalent to “Rotten Tomatoes” for News

#235

Post by Kiro »

skinnymuch wrote: post #153
Kiro wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A group of my friends who are real film enthusiasts bashed IMDB top 250 in a similar way so they decided to create their own top 250. They had a big spreadsheet, argued and discussed for a long time. The result? Pretty much exactly the same as IMDB top 250.

Really? Their results ended up being close to IMDB? I’ve done similar lists with enthusiast friends. Ours was different enough. There’a no Shawshank Redemption anywhere close to the top, etc.

Yeah, it was ironic. Can I see your list somewhere?

Re: Credder Wants to Create an Equivalent to “Rotten Tomatoes” for News

#236

Post by skinnymuch »

SkyBelow wrote: post #199
skinnymuch wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty unimportant but just clearing up ownership info. Warner Bros/AT&T are minority owners of Fandango which owns Rotten Tomatoes. Comcast/NBC Universal are majority owners.

I was going off my now shown to be incorrect memory. It appears to be too late to edit the comment. Apologies for spreading any incorrect information.

Hah I wasn’t blasting you or anything! Sorry if I made it that way. I tried saying it was unimportant to the overall convo. If anything it reinforces your argument since it’s two of the big 5 movie studios.

Re: Credder Wants to Create an Equivalent to “Rotten Tomatoes” for News

#237

Post by tiredyam »

chocolatebunny wrote: post #192
wutbrodo wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what I find so disgusting about this tendency of many people. If I don't care enough about an issue to be rigorous about it, then by definition I don't care enough about it to 1) vote based off of it or 2) spread my uninformed opinion about it (when I do talk about it, I'm clear that I have only a tentative, uninformed model of the situation). People have often defended the average voter with "people have busy…

An individual may not be that well informed when voting but the collective of all votes is supposed to average out to something more reasonable. There was a story about a bunch of people who were guessing the weight of an ox in a state fair ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Galton#Variance_and_st... ) where people were generally not very well informed but the average weight guessed was pretty accurate. There ar…

Interesting, I’ll bite; what do you think are the main problems plaguing western democracy currently?

Re: Credder Wants to Create an Equivalent to “Rotten Tomatoes” for News

#238

Post by skinnymuch »

Kiro wrote: post #235
skinnymuch wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Their results ended up being close to IMDB? I’ve done similar lists with enthusiast friends. Ours was different enough. There’a no Shawshank Redemption anywhere close to the top, etc.

Yeah, it was ironic. Can I see your list somewhere?

I’m trying to remember which service it was on. On second thought looking over IMDB top movies. The list probably is sort of similar. It really is hard to get a conesensus for top movies. Sure my own personal list as a media geek will be different. But no one else is really going to agree with my esoteric specific films.

IMDB does have some films that stick out in the top of their list though. Star Wars being so high, LOTR being so high, Inception, Seven, Green Mile, Gladiator.

No matter though you’re right that consensus is hard to get. And most of the films that I listed as out of place are part of fanboy beloved franchises or headed by fanboy beloved directors.

Re: Credder Wants to Create an Equivalent to “Rotten Tomatoes” for News

#239

Post by tiredyam »

munificent wrote: post #171
josefresco wrote: post #58

This, and many other concepts based on "vetting" news assumes that the audience cares. A significant portion of the audience does not care, and is instead looking for news that validates their worldview, and furthers their (and their chosen political party's) goals. So basically these services will cannibalize the part of the audience that does care about truth, turning people against each other over marginally skewe…

The past few years have certainly provided mountains of coal to shovel into my cynicism train's engine, but I am not quite so far gone to believe this entirely. Your point is true of many people, but I think even more do want good information and there is the possibility to improve journalism going forward. Snopes is a good example that fact checking is useful, desired, and can help drive consensus. I can't count the…

I have been kicking this idea of a news subreddit with paid contributors who are vetted. Essentially a news lobsters.rs. My main thought is that changing the news industry seems hard given all the broken incentives, but changing the way we discuss news to be less hive mind-y should be easier. Outside accounts would be unable to upvote/downvote/submit only read. I was initially imagining that grad-students could use the platform to make money while in school. Patreon would be used to collect a donation and money would be distributed equally. Accounts below a certain level of monthly karma would be audited. The accounts on the subreddit would be badged with their specialization (international politics, US domestic politics, economics etc.) similar to quora.

This could even be made off reddit using lobste.rs source code as it’s open source, thoughts?

Re: Credder Wants to Create an Equivalent to “Rotten Tomatoes” for News

#240

Post by bufferoverflow »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #231
bufferoverflow wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A large percentage of the population doesn't consider NYT, WP, WSJ reputable. They are all extremely biased by their politics. I can't even name a single news source that I'd call reputable and that I trust. That's why I like reading multiple sources on the subject plus comments on Reddit/HN.

Actually, if you just read the news stories, and not the opinion articles from all three of those, you are probably doing pretty well. They can get something wrong once in a while, sure, but it's mostly good. Television news is going to probably be not quite as good, just because they can't cover as much as a newspaper in only 30-60 minutes. Again, just the news, not the opinion stuff. If you just take all of it in u…

Have you already forgotten the "weapons of mass destruction" fiasco? The one that NYT apologized for:

https://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/26/world/from-the-editors-th...

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