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The New York Times made a weird editorial decision with its tech coverage

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Re: The New York Times made a weird editorial decision with its tech coverage

#81

Post by pjc50 »

lokar wrote: post #28
webmobdev wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Identity theft is a crime. If a platform facilitates this, it should be liable.

Identity theft is a crime when used to commit fraud. Just claiming to be someone but not otherwise defrauding anyone is fine.

Twitter verification started because of a fraud and a lawsuit: https://bleacherreport.com/articles/193279-tony-la-russa-law...

The news is that they're effectively removing what verification there was, and the checkmark becomes basically a TF2 hat that means nothing. You'll be able to change your display name to "Elon Musk" and buy a checkmark.

Re: The New York Times made a weird editorial decision with its tech coverage

#82

Post by pbourke »

asdajksah2123 wrote: post #14
fullshark wrote: post #3

> As a longtime working journalist, longtime check-haver, and someone who knows lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of media professionals I can promise you that working journalists derive zero value, social status, or self-esteem from this. Blatantly false, as the childish histrionics over the new verification system from many journalists this past week have shown. A lot of journalists' entire self worth seems…

The most prominent complaint came from Stephen King. Not a journalist. And he definitely doesn't have his self worth tied up into his Twitter audience. But anyways, by your logic, the entire HN audience's self worth is tied up in whether an iPhone has an audio jack or not, because this audience spent way more time and energy on that issue than journalists have on the blue checkmark.

See how many will give the check up willingly and you’ll figure out how valuable it is to them.

I’ve seen a lot of “hey you just got your spurs” back slapping when someone gets a check.

Re: The New York Times made a weird editorial decision with its tech coverage

#83

Post by [deleted] »

watwut wrote: post #59
bad_username wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter is hardly a marketplace of ideas. It is a marketplace of hot takes. Twitter format is the enemy of depth and nuance. More importantly, Twitter has been steering this marketplace in a very specific direction, promoting certain viewpoints and suppressing the opposing ones. I am not convinced Musk is going to handle the issue in any good way, but Twitter has not been a neutral "public square" for a good number o…

It was the place where you could read what actual biologists think, actual layers think etc, without having it filtered through third party. As duch, you really could use it as marketplace of ideas.

[deleted]

Re: The New York Times made a weird editorial decision with its tech coverage

#84

Post by JumpCrisscross »

dan-robertson wrote: post #78

Related: https://twitter.com/i/status/1588231892792328192 And the first tweet here: https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1588240007000911873 (I think it’s generally right even though I don’t really like the author) I think the general thrust seems pretty reasonable: saying ‘we should cover all tech with an investigative lens’ isn’t actually a neutral policy because if you’re a newspaper then you already want to find go…

> it’s saying that the only stories that go through must be critical or uncovering various hidden harms or issues

Speaking outside my circle of competence. But I don't think it's that direct. When a topic is put under an investigative lens, it's assigned investigative journalists.

These aren't folks who write fluff. They don't resonate with baseless optimism. They're men and women of hard facts. So they sniff, sniff, sniff until they find something juicy. Then they write about it. Everything they're writing is true. (It may also flatter. Underdog stories, for example.) But when the beer fridge was swapped with a gin cabinet, the journalism got noticeably darker. No conscious filtering needed.

Now that I think about it, this may also be happening in political journalism. Positive stories are dismissed as shilling. Writers write to be read. So they stop writing those, and instead write darkly.

Re: The New York Times made a weird editorial decision with its tech coverage

#85

Post by Aerroon »

AlexandrB wrote: post #15
_zgx0 wrote: post #2

>Instead of covering the [tech] industry with a business press lens or a consumer lens they started covering it with a very tough investigative lens — highly oppositional at all times and occasionally unfair. ... >Tech executives and investors mostly did not like this change, for understandable reasons. And I mostly agree with them on the merits. The author agrees - that the tech industry should not be subject to inv…

The tech industry needs more investigative coverage, not less. The reason disasters like Theranos or Nikola were able to waste as much time and money as they did is because most of the tech press is focused on regurgitating press releases and hyping up the next big thing.

I don't see how investigative journalism would fix the situation though. Theranos scammed wealthy investors. Wealthy investors should be able to do at least a little bit of due diligence. If they had done that then they would've known their idea was not feasible.

It's the investors themselves that added to the hype regardless of the press releases.

Re: The New York Times made a weird editorial decision with its tech coverage

#86

Post by JumpCrisscross »

bryan_w wrote: post #42
acdha wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s also weird coming after decades of tech reshaping media: local news is a fraction of what it once was, leaving important stories uncovered; things like Facebook’s infamous pivot to video, instant news pages, Google AMP, etc. all pulled control to tech companies and lost money for media companies; and the very way people write headlines and stories changed based on social media and search company decisions. Musk…

Nothing stopping the media companies from making their own football. The owner of the NYT is a billionaire, he couldn't hire a few CS grads and make a site people wanted to go to? It's like they saw the whole Napster situation and said, "Thank goodness that's happening to audio media; we'll be fine because we're visual media! Let's just keep running the printing press."

> he couldn't hire a few CS grads and make a site people wanted to go to?

The Times has a strong digital presence [1]. It's also a uniquely-successful media property.

[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-york-times-nyt-q3-earnings-...

Re: The New York Times made a weird editorial decision with its tech coverage

#87

Post by aaron695 »

A good example that people with Blue Checks are idiots?

When Blue checks mention each other they get notifications. This is valuable to journalist who want to interact with other people of note.

Ever wonder why Blue Checks seem to interact more than the unwashed masses. It's more than respect or following, it's also the Blue Check technology pushing them together.

Will allowing anyone with a Blue Check give Stephen King a notification, meaning it'll all get blocked and make the whole thing pointless and not worth $8. Probably, but something new will emerge with destroying the old money that goes with Twitter journalism, and that at least is interesting.

Re: The New York Times made a weird editorial decision with its tech coverage

#88

Post by imron »

nickthegreek wrote: post #40
noAnswer wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be surprised if they do any "verification" at all. If you are a paining member, you will get a special icon. That's it. I knew web forums that had that. Members that donated to the forum got a special status icon. It could get "trendy" and every one wants to show that they are part of the in-group. Having to pay in order to be save from impersonation sound like extortion though.

You are being downvoted, but the news just broke that this is true. No id verification will take place for the $8. Just a cc.

A credit card is tied to your ID through your bank or other cc provider.

If you abuse the rules your payment account and your Twitter account will be banned [0].

Maybe you have more than one CC, but keep playing shenanigans and you’ll eventually run out.

An $8 disincentive is also enough of a bar to knock out 95% of the problem.

0: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1587853006699401216#m

Re: The New York Times made a weird editorial decision with its tech coverage

#89

Post by smeagull »

WillPostForFood wrote: post #7
_zgx0 wrote: post #2

>Instead of covering the [tech] industry with a business press lens or a consumer lens they started covering it with a very tough investigative lens — highly oppositional at all times and occasionally unfair. ... >Tech executives and investors mostly did not like this change, for understandable reasons. And I mostly agree with them on the merits. The author agrees - that the tech industry should not be subject to inv…

You said that the tech industry should not be subject to investigative coverage? ! Yglesias actually said: And the press should try to normalize coverage of the tech industry as just another business sector. Which would include investigative coverage when appropriate.

Fawning is typical of media coverage of most business sectors.

Re: The New York Times made a weird editorial decision with its tech coverage

#90

Post by ramraj07 »

throwaway1777 wrote: post #52
KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can suggest that coverage is inaccurate or unfair, but suggesting that tech should not be covered with an investigative lens is hard to argue. That's because he's being very charitable to what is happening. In fact, under the guise of aggressively investigative coverage, the media is constantly propagating false memes about the industry. Biggest example is the idea that it's dominated by a culture of white tech…

Too on the nose. When I worked at faang almost my entire org was Indians.

Do you mean Indian or Indian looking? Can you generally tell which of them were American citizens vs. immigrants? If not, can you see the pretentiousness in your statement?
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