Facebook gives money to America’s biggest news organizations • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook gives money to America’s biggest news organizations

#221

Post by hsitz » Tue, Apr 20, 2021, 12:03 AM UTC

imgabe wrote: post #214

hsitz wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's kind of a throwaway passage in the article but it feels like a crucial point. Maybe I'm wrong but "buying off" to me strongly suggests something along the lines of a bribe. We're going to give you this cash, nudge nudge, wink wink, maybe that negative stuff you print about us goes away. My question is: is this actually happening? My question is: Do you really need to ask that? Human nature is human nature; the…

> My question is: Do you really need to ask that? Yes, you really need to ask that. When accusing someone of misconduct you really do need to ask if it is really happening and not just hand wave about human nature and make judgements based on untested assumptions. You really really can’t just go along with whatever fits your biases.

Well, I would say that if you want to accuse them of misconduct then the main thing would be to ascertain intentions. Certainly, if there is no bad intention on the part of the actor, then it makes no sense to accuse them of misconduct. So if you want to accuse them of misconduct, definitely, yes, you need to ask questions about their intent.

On the other hand, regardless of intent, it does still make sense to say that the system is maladjusted, that the system is designed in such a way that even actors with good intentions are incentivized to do harmful things. And the question regarding the system really is clear: Does a recipient accepting money from an advertiser tend to create in them a more positive opinion regarding the advertiser than if the recipient received no money at all? To that, the answer is yes. It doesn't mean the recipient has committed "misconduct"; more likely it's just that the recipient is a well-intentioned actor in a maladjusted system.

Re: Facebook gives money to America’s biggest news organizations

#222

Post by HDMI_Cable » Tue, Apr 20, 2021, 1:25 AM UTC

motohagiography wrote: post #179

Private mainstream media in Canada takes a lot of direct subsidy money from government as well (famously, $600m a few years ago), and it's to the point where it's debatable whether news outlets are real businesses producing something people need or desire, or they're just a policy objective. A real news business, one that publishes non-fiction content about current events that people want to read in exchange for subs…

To be fair Canadian news is still pretty diverse, it just hasn't resorted to social-media clickbait headlines (all that much). If you look at any of the "Sun" newspapers you have a pretty consistent right-wing opinion, "Star" newspapers get you a left-wing opinion, and the various local news companies are also pretty diverse.

The CBC and Globe and Mail might be boring / establishment, but is that a bad thing?

Re: Facebook gives money to America’s biggest news organizations

#223

Post by yepnopemaybe » Tue, Apr 20, 2021, 3:20 AM UTC

imgabe wrote: post #214

hsitz wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's kind of a throwaway passage in the article but it feels like a crucial point. Maybe I'm wrong but "buying off" to me strongly suggests something along the lines of a bribe. We're going to give you this cash, nudge nudge, wink wink, maybe that negative stuff you print about us goes away. My question is: is this actually happening? My question is: Do you really need to ask that? Human nature is human nature; the…

> My question is: Do you really need to ask that? Yes, you really need to ask that. When accusing someone of misconduct you really do need to ask if it is really happening and not just hand wave about human nature and make judgements based on untested assumptions. You really really can’t just go along with whatever fits your biases.

This permissive admitted towards public corruption is a fairly new development in US politics.

Jimmy Carter put his struggling peanut farm in a blind trust to avoid the appearance of corruption. This has become a punchline today, but was standard at the time.

Frankly, the corruption of the Clintons, who generally took turns raking in cash while the other performed duties as a public servant, sent the dominos crashing here.

Because corruption is incredibly easy to hide and obscure, it is correct to cultivate a culture of transparency accountability when, for example, tens of millions of dollars change hands between powerful institutions for no apparent reason.

Re: Facebook gives money to America’s biggest news organizations

#224

Post by dash2 » Tue, Apr 20, 2021, 4:04 AM UTC

yepnopemaybe wrote: post #223

imgabe wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My question is: Do you really need to ask that? Yes, you really need to ask that. When accusing someone of misconduct you really do need to ask if it is really happening and not just hand wave about human nature and make judgements based on untested assumptions. You really really can’t just go along with whatever fits your biases.

This permissive admitted towards public corruption is a fairly new development in US politics. Jimmy Carter put his struggling peanut farm in a blind trust to avoid the appearance of corruption. This has become a punchline today, but was standard at the time. Frankly, the corruption of the Clintons, who generally took turns raking in cash while the other performed duties as a public servant, sent the dominos crashing…

GP wasn’t permissive towards corruption. Rather, he/she was demanding about evidence.

Re: Facebook gives money to America’s biggest news organizations

#225

Post by stephenhuey » Tue, Apr 20, 2021, 5:18 AM UTC

MattGaiser wrote: post #41

stephenhuey wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the local papers have always had ads in them to supplement revenue, so I imagine you could still reach $100K or more. In a lot of small towns that’s still enough to cover an editor-in-chief and an additional reporter.

A lot of those ads were things like classifieds. That market is solidly eaten by the internet.

True in many places, but the papers in the 10- and 20-thousand person towns my relatives live in have a strong classifieds section because they’re too small to be on Craigslist.

Re: Facebook gives money to America’s biggest news organizations

#226

Post by selfhoster11 » Tue, Apr 20, 2021, 8:13 AM UTC

WORMS_EAT_WORMS wrote: post #44

Let us be real, folks: - You are reading this comment. - You are likely highly or fairly paid. - You don’t pay for your news (to a partisan substack doesn’t count) Edit: Added likely to comment. Icing on the cake is if you consume almost all your news through Twitter / social media. Maybe stop clicking and reacting and instead stop and reflect your role in all this? Cold hard truth? We caused this problem, Facebook i…

> - You don’t pay for your news (to a partisan substack doesn’t count)

Point me to a somewhat unbiased, affordable (no, anything more than $9 a month is not affordable and I've got other expenses), non-US centric news source and we have a deal.

Re: Facebook gives money to America’s biggest news organizations

#227

Post by thu2111 » Tue, Apr 20, 2021, 8:16 AM UTC

hsitz wrote: post #221

imgabe wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My question is: Do you really need to ask that? Yes, you really need to ask that. When accusing someone of misconduct you really do need to ask if it is really happening and not just hand wave about human nature and make judgements based on untested assumptions. You really really can’t just go along with whatever fits your biases.

Well, I would say that if you want to accuse them of misconduct then the main thing would be to ascertain intentions. Certainly, if there is no bad intention on the part of the actor, then it makes no sense to accuse them of misconduct. So if you want to accuse them of misconduct, definitely, yes, you need to ask questions about their intent. On the other hand, regardless of intent, it does still make sense to say th…

Surely something being misconduct or not is independent of someone's intentions? All kinds of people do bad things with good intentions.

Re: Facebook gives money to America’s biggest news organizations

#228

Post by thu2111 » Tue, Apr 20, 2021, 8:31 AM UTC

op03 wrote: post #137

afavour wrote: post #32

> There’s no evidence that the deal directly affects coverage in either the news or editorial departments. Before the Facebook News deal, the Times famously published an op-ed titled “It’s Time to Break Up Facebook,” by Chris Hughes, a cofounder of Facebook turned critic. And since the deal, columns from Tim Wu and Kara Swisher, among others, have been similarly critical. In December, the editorial board welcomed a l…

The AP's NORC Center for Public Affairs Research recent report on Trust in American Media shows no one gives a fig what the NYT thinks, especially what its critical of - https://apnorc.org/projects/a-new-way-of-looking-at-trust-in...

Could you justify that claim a bit more? I downloaded the report and the phrase New York Times doesn't seem to appear in it.

The whole report is actually a bit odd. It talks about the "five core values of journalism" and claims only super-liberal people support all of them, but the list of values appears to be basically a list of left wing priorities and worldviews, e.g. the last two values are "giving voice to the less powerful" and "social criticism". Factualism is defined not as an absolute value but merely a tradeoff, given that "the truth is more than just the matter of adding facts and this emphasis on factualism can mask bias". So that would appear to be tautological - all they've done is ask a bunch of journalists what they feel is important, got a bunch of left wing priorities, discovered that only left wing people agree with the full list, and the only thing people across the spectrum agree in is that facts are important. Surely these findings are true, but so what? It's just a dozen different ways of telling people things that are already obvious, rephrased in terms of Haidt's moral foundations theory. US journalists are much more left wing than the population as a whole, that's a widely published result for many years already. The fact that the AP felt a need to do a research study to prove it is sort of indicative of why the media has such deep problems.

The final section is quite telling. They do an experiment where they take a test story and rewrite it to be less left-biased and contain more facts. They find the resulting story appeals more to everyone, not just conservatives. It's a sad indictment of the AP that this is actually presented as a novel finding.

Re: Facebook gives money to America’s biggest news organizations

#229

Post by hsitz » Tue, Apr 20, 2021, 8:53 AM UTC

thu2111 wrote: post #227

hsitz wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I would say that if you want to accuse them of misconduct then the main thing would be to ascertain intentions. Certainly, if there is no bad intention on the part of the actor, then it makes no sense to accuse them of misconduct. So if you want to accuse them of misconduct, definitely, yes, you need to ask questions about their intent. On the other hand, regardless of intent, it does still make sense to say th…

Surely something being misconduct or not is independent of someone's intentions? All kinds of people do bad things with good intentions.

Yes, we've got to make sure we're talking about the same thing here. In general, we don't morally censure a person who does bad things with good intentions. For example, in criminal law there is usually a requirement of ill-intent, called "mens rea"[1], which means the actor is aware that what they're doing is wrong.

If a person does something wrong but is not aware that what they did is wrong, the general reaction is not to "accuse them of misconduct", but rather to explain to them what it is about their action that's wrong, after which (if they in fact have good intent) they will no longer do that action.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mens_rea

Re: Facebook gives money to America’s biggest news organizations

#230

Post by op03 » Tue, Apr 20, 2021, 9:51 AM UTC

thu2111 wrote: post #228

op03 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The AP's NORC Center for Public Affairs Research recent report on Trust in American Media shows no one gives a fig what the NYT thinks, especially what its critical of - https://apnorc.org/projects/a-new-way-of-looking-at-trust-in...

Could you justify that claim a bit more? I downloaded the report and the phrase New York Times doesn't seem to appear in it. The whole report is actually a bit odd. It talks about the "five core values of journalism" and claims only super-liberal people support all of them, but the list of values appears to be basically a list of left wing priorities and worldviews, e.g. the last two values are "giving voice to the l…

In the info tsunami conditions we live in, what news orgs think or push constantly get diluted by literally thousand other sources every second. They have great faith in their ability to capture the attention of the herd, but since everyone else is great at it too, there is no great value to it.

Therefore it doesn't matter what the NYT does in terms of critique, what they think or what they want people to think. Or who they take cash from. Be it Facebook or anyone or anything else.

Thats what the AP study reinforces for me. The NYT and its critics and fan clubs overestimate greatly the value of the NYT or any other mainstream news org in the current info tsunami environment.

The only contribution or "value" left for news orgs in an info tsunami, is surfacing new data through their networks and that the AP study calls facts. This is what google search bots do when they scour the network. Beyond that news orgs play no role, but they haven't realized that yet. And that wastes everyones time.

They would be much more useful to society if they acted more like search engines or gathering points for info exchange on the network and shed all the other baggage.