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The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

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Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#271

Post by awalton »

brendoelfrendo wrote: post #248
awalton wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, what I want is Google Reader back. And I know I'm far, far, far away from being alone on this. Just give me the text, not the videos and the horrible formatting and poor font choices and all of that bullshit - I'd gladly pay for it, if it still existed. May it rest in peace.

Google Reader was just an RSS reader, and there are plenty of those available, both free and paid. RSS doesn't get you past pay walls, though.

That's like saying "Google is just a search engine" and ignoring the fact that "to google" is now an English verb and the rest of the impact it has had on information availability in the world.

Reader was a synthesis of open web culture - it offered a hub of reading multiple streams of content in one formatted location, and it did so with the support of one of the largest companies on the earth with the ability to use its clout to affect change on other organizations and make that data available to them in the form they wanted. Google could have been the 800 pound gorilla of news publications a decade before Apple News even tried.

But they just, threw it away. That's what I want back - I don't care if it's RSS or some new fancy JSON-backed article exchange protocol - the transport layer and reader app itself is largely meaningless to me; the simple elegance of being able to read the news in one location without some designers notion of layout and overzealous marketers' idea of ad coverage, and having it be quick is much more powerful. No more 2-10MB garbage landfills to serve 20kb of textual information. No more fighting to make the content work on mobile - RSS was inherently responsive and accessibility-friendly.

The technological idea of federated content have largely died because Google decided it didn't want to support them, and nobody else - not Microsoft, not Apple, nobody - stepped up to take the mantle. It had a technological problem for Google - the fact that you could pick another reader meant that there was no instinctive centralization on Googles' service, unlike situations like AMP where they're literally the man in the middle.

And while Instant Articles and AMP are trying to fill that market gap, more often than not what I find replacing it is Twitter, which is comically filled with horrible misinformation and terrible sourcing practices that make it a haven of misinformation instead of... news. And that's a real damn shame.

Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#272

Post by beerandt »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #143
marcus_holmes wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As always, who judges whether something is true?

Another fun one I ask when someone brings up Snopes: Who snopes the snopes? In other words how do we know they are not being biased or thorough enough? I am not saying everything there is wrong but I have ran into weird biased articles before.

The bigger issues with Snopes are:

1) Complete lack of transparency. No versioning or history of how answers have changed. They even opt-out of archive.org history tracking. They usually only disclose one author, when oftentimes there are many.

2) They editorialize many questions, changing them in such a way that they can give the answer they want to. This is done often by inserting modifiers like "always" or "never" or something similar.

Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#273

Post by kyleblarson »

brendoelfrendo wrote: post #263
kyleblarson wrote: post #243

Of course they left the Wall Street Journal (paywalled and quite expensive) out of their list because it doesn't fit their narrative.

As in... the WSJ publishes lies but is paywalled? That's generally not my experience; WSJ is nowhere near where it used to be, but isn't among the trash tier of journalism, yet. The "media bias" chart from Ad Fontes media puts them at a slight right slant, with reporting accuracy more-or-less on par with publications like Newsweek, The Economist, and WaPo.[0][1] [0] Chart: https://www.adfontesmedia.com/gallery/ [1] M…

I was implying that the WSJ is generally conservative, and the only examples they give of free sites are (uber / crazy) conservative. I've subscribed to the WSJ for 15 years and read it daily. Their iPad app is beautiful.

Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#274

Post by andrewtbham »

mateus1 wrote: post #270
andrewtbham wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will never pay for the nyt... I would much rather give my money to a patreon where someone actually knows something about the topics I am intersted in. Journalists reporting on topics they don't understand doesn't make sense... https://www.patreon.com/hyperchange https://www.patreon.com/EverydayAstronaut furthermore, nyt are mostly shills for their advertisers. That is why nyt trashed tesla because GM and Ford adve…

You can't compare niche edutainment channels to the major news outlets. NYT is in the business of credible news, these small content makers aren't credible sources of news.

I categorically disagree. Most journalists just quote someone they deem to be an expert on a topic. On topics that interest you, you're better served to do some research and find the experts for yourself.

Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#276

Post by ericd »

jimkleiber wrote: post #261
andrewtbham wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

at least on the topic of tesla, nyt has been wrong and unfair against tesla for about 10 years. i really don't know about other topics... but... pg repeatedly questions the integrity of nyt and has personally been the victim of their bias. https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1236975851255857152?lang=en https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1236979160100343812

In the first link you provided, PG put two photos: one of the NYT article and one of his HN post. The NYT article yes, condensed his lengthy post into one sentence, which will almost always be incomplete, but they also linked that quote to what I assume was the HN post. I guess it seems to me that PG is upset they didn't fully encapsulate his ideas, and I'd probably be frustrated as well. But is that the role of a jo…

I think the bigger issue is that the summary is a misrepresentation of what he said. At least, I don't see where he "warned that start-up investments would dry up".

Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#277

Post by googthrowaway42 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #265
googthrowaway42 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> objectives facts (what is) rather than ideology (what should be) What is a "fact" or what is "true" is dependent on your values (aka your ideology). This is one of Nietzsche's main contributions to philosophy. There are things like mathematical and logical truth and really basic physical assertions (e.g. the sky is blue) but those are qualitatively different than what we're talking about. Both normative and positiv…

> What is a "fact" or what is "true" in dependent on your values (aka your ideology). This is one of Nietzsche's main contributions to philosophy. No, it's not. That's one of the Enlightenment’s many contributions to philosophy and the foundation on which the advances in knowledge of the universe enabling the explosion of post-Enlightenment technical progress is built. Obviously, one might have ideological, aesthetic…

[flagged]

Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#278

Post by auggierose »

jimkleiber wrote: post #261
andrewtbham wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

at least on the topic of tesla, nyt has been wrong and unfair against tesla for about 10 years. i really don't know about other topics... but... pg repeatedly questions the integrity of nyt and has personally been the victim of their bias. https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1236975851255857152?lang=en https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1236979160100343812

In the first link you provided, PG put two photos: one of the NYT article and one of his HN post. The NYT article yes, condensed his lengthy post into one sentence, which will almost always be incomplete, but they also linked that quote to what I assume was the HN post. I guess it seems to me that PG is upset they didn't fully encapsulate his ideas, and I'd probably be frustrated as well. But is that the role of a jo…

Well the point of the NYT article totally evaporates if you read the HN post. PG is explicitly saying that no-one knows the effect that this will have, but better to prepare for the worst.

And that's the thing: if you cannot trust that someone makes their point as neutrally as possible, they become worthless for me as a source of condensed information. Rather look up the original source then for myself.

Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#279

Post by gonehome »

andrewtbham wrote: post #235
arp242 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's 7 years ago? I don't know anything about that entire story so I can't comment specifically, but the NYT publishes about 150 articles a day, so there are bound to be some stinkers over the years. It's not great, but dismissing an entire publication over it doesn't strike me as fair.

this attitude is part of the problem... no one goes back and holds them accountable for anything. they just move onto the next BS problem and never notice the old stuff was dead wrong. If you want to change your perspective, invest in the companies... it will stick with you. I foolishly shorted apple around antenna gate. that was the beginning of me starting to hold the media accountable. the media is wrong over and…

I'd love to see historical articles matching what they predicted with what actually happened.

At least in tech writing, I'd expect most of their predictions to be wrong.

Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#280

Post by wing-_-nuts »

When I first saw google books and google scholar I thought 'Oh my god, this is amazing, this will change everything!'. I imagined that a decade or two in the future, being able to read pretty much any book or paper I wanted for a reasonable monthly fee. The search functionality was an absolute godsend!

Now? Google books has been pretty much sidelined and abandoned. I feel like I've watched the second library of Alexandria burn, and I am heartbroken.

My only consolation, is sites like sci-hub and libgen have made textbooks and papers downloadable, albeit illegally. I still really wish I could search within every book.

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