Ad Boycott of Facebook Keeps Growing

But I think the problem is that a lot of news publications have slowly become more and more biased, and they have cultivated specific audiences. Maybe because of the biases of their journalists, maybe because they are trying to cater to the outspoken, who might only be a small minority, maybe for some other reason. Thus the subscription model starts to fall apart when the people who want to support it shrinks, so you still might be engaged in clickbait and ragebait to try and grab people and bring them in to subscribe, or keep the people that like the type of clickbait and ragebait they publish. Unfortunately, you are likely getting more and more of one specific group.

I think this is a losing proposition because as you target a smaller and smaller part of the population, if you step out of line by publishing something that is against their world view, they will unsubscribe and take their money elsewhere. Look at what happened with the Tom Cotton oped in the NYT. The editor that approved that quit because of the outrage, and I wonder how many subscriptions they lost. If you think that oped was horrible, then why not post a rebuttal? Why is the mere act of publishing the opinion of a senator such a crime? I think this shows that the subscription model is not protecting against the degradation of the NYT in quality. If you had a wider user base, and appeal to a wide range of people, you could lose some subscriptions when putting out some controversial article, but it wouldn't cripple you.

It's great that you get to keep in touch with your family! Is there not any other product, owned by a more ethical organization, which could do the job? Also, more generall, is it even possible today to have such a product developed, if FB will just use its lobbyists and power to ensure it can buy that competitor and bend it to Zuckerberg's will?

How do we weight and balance the damage done by FB to our social discourse and elections, vs the benefits your family and many others have enjoyed?

HN commentary: Is anything I'm writing downvote worthy? Do you think my original comment (or this one) is incendiary or doesn't make the dialogue more nuanced and developed?

> supporting immigration, both legal and illegal.

I'm not sure how to assess or interpret what you're saying. What does it mean to "support immigration"?

I'm pretty sure you're not literally suggesting that absolutely zero people be allowed to move to the U.S.

It'd be helpful if you could explain what "supporting immigration" means to you in this context.

Otherwise it's all too easy for people to make their own (usually negative, often untrue) assumptions.

For the record, I'll say that I don't think folks illegally crossing the border should be treated the way they've been - especially with regards to the inhumane and immoral, and probably illegal camps that both adults and children were (are?) put in.

Obviously that's only one part of a much broader conversation, and, I want to give you the opportunity to explain what you mean, and not jump to conclusions.

Lastly, my own belief is "the view from nowhere" is impossible. We're all biased, consciously or otherwise, and I believe it's valuable to aspire to a self-awareness of that bias as I think "removing it" is a logical impossibility.

What I think is important for news organizations which aspire to trustworthiness to do, is, provide transparency, accountability, fact-checking, and overall thoughtfulness. Obviously some of these things are not easily quantifiable.

But, the humanities have centuries of experience in assessing and analyzing texts written by people. Philosophy is an example of one humanistic field which has its own procedures for analyzing more "qualitative" works, for example.

I'm a big fan of valuing expertise. Just as you'd want an experienced software developer making decisions about application development, I think it's valuable to turn to experts in written discourse - humanists of all stripes, the oft-maligned liberal arts - for direction in how to analyze texts.

Basically what I'm saying is if we're going to do this, let's do this for real ;). Otherwise, it's not reasoned, informed discussion/debate/analysis - it's just a reactive sharing of beliefs.

Yes, they are.

There's nothing strange about it at all. If you want to sell securities on public markets you have to abide by certain rules. It's completely reasonable, and I know that corporations and their apologists like to throw around "private" as a buzzword and pretend like they should have free reign, but they do not.

There is no such thing as a "private" publicly traded company.