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NPR quits Twitter after being labeled as 'state-affiliated media'

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Re: NPR quits Twitter after being labeled as 'state-affiliated media'

#321

Post by tppiotrowski »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #64
segasaturn wrote: post #9

I wonder if this will have any domino effect, right now the only thing holding Twitter together is its network effects. According to the article on NPR's site[0], they have 8.7 million followers and run 52 different accounts so Twitter is losing a pretty important partner. Also, no mention of Mastodon in this announcement. It sounds like they're just going to use Facebook for the time being. 0: https://www.npr.org/20…

> no mention of Mastodon in this announcement Mastodon blew its moment. It could have eaten Twitter’s lunch. But onboarding—specifically, choosing a server—was too tedious for non-niche adoption.

My experience was bad. A lot of servers my friends used didn't take new sign ups so I was forced to pick my own which went offline a few weeks later and I haven't tried using it since because there's no indicator of server quality that I know of and all the servers with a lot of active users are not taking signups. Recommendations from HN would be appreciated.

Re: NPR quits Twitter after being labeled as 'state-affiliated media'

#322

Post by cguess »

QuizzicalCarbon wrote: post #247
afinlayson wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SpaceX and Telsa are government funded ... More so than NPR. I don't see that tag anywhere on Twitter. And I wouldn't be surprised if twitter is combing the tax code to find government subsidies. It's the slippery slope fallacy. Maybe we should start calling jaywalkers un-convicted criminals. It'd be a good way to differentiate rural and urban people for political gain. This is just another way to keep people heading…

Although, NPR was created by an act of Congress, along with the CPB.

and the AP was created by the Supreme Court, the AP is not a government entity.

Re: NPR quits Twitter after being labeled as 'state-affiliated media'

#323

Post by riffic »

rvz wrote: post #143
segasaturn wrote: post #9

I wonder if this will have any domino effect, right now the only thing holding Twitter together is its network effects. According to the article on NPR's site[0], they have 8.7 million followers and run 52 different accounts so Twitter is losing a pretty important partner. Also, no mention of Mastodon in this announcement. It sounds like they're just going to use Facebook for the time being. 0: https://www.npr.org/20…

> Also, no mention of Mastodon in this announcement. It sounds like they're just going to use Facebook for the time being. I think it is time that we can call it a day after 7 years, and we should also admit that the Mastodon experiment has become unviable, unscalable, obsolete and already extinct as a serious alternative against Twitter. It had its slither of a chance, and it still failed. Maybe a lesson in networks…

mastodon as an open source project is wildly successful what are you even talking about?

Re: NPR quits Twitter after being labeled as 'state-affiliated media'

#324

Post by JohnFen »

smotched wrote: post #63

They will look cool to a certain group of people momentary but it will hurt them in the long run. The average user won't even notice their tweets are missing from their feed.

Since only about 25% of the US population pays any attention to Twitter, I think that you're correct -- the average person won't notice NPR's tweets are missing.

Re: NPR quits Twitter after being labeled as 'state-affiliated media'

#325

Post by effingwewt »

pixxel wrote: post #214
segasaturn wrote: post #9

I wonder if this will have any domino effect, right now the only thing holding Twitter together is its network effects. According to the article on NPR's site[0], they have 8.7 million followers and run 52 different accounts so Twitter is losing a pretty important partner. Also, no mention of Mastodon in this announcement. It sounds like they're just going to use Facebook for the time being. 0: https://www.npr.org/20…

8.7 million followers but take a look at their feed. Go back a week in time (for a snapshot) and the like/retweets/comments are generally in the 10s or low hundreds, with a few exceptions (low thousands). Same with NYT. Last time I looked they had 50+ million followers with similar low engagement. So how many of their followers are bots and what’s NPRs true value to Twitter? I don’t know. I’ve got a small 5k followin…

You hit the nail on the head.

Most twitter account followers are nothing but bots. Millions of 'followers' but likes and retweets only in the dozens.

It also makes for huge egos. Like, they know they bought all their followers, but they wake up one day and forget, and start to believe their own bullshit.

To be fair it is everywhere, youtube accounts will millions of followers do the same. Never more than 200 comments or likes on them.

Seems to me the only organic accounts are the ones with only a few K.

I assume anything with 100k-1 million followers is 95% bots.

No one ever thought it was odd that these accounts all got their million followers in the first few days of acct creation, then literally didnt gain any more ever?

Or how odd it is that every celebrity or business just happened to hit 1mil+?

Re: NPR quits Twitter after being labeled as 'state-affiliated media'

#326

Post by dirtyid »

oefrha wrote: post #260
trasz3 wrote: post #70

Yeah, it's not like their CEO came directly from the relevant government bureau, right? I'm not a fan of Elon (or most companies, for that matter), but this was the right thing to do. Previously the "government-sponsored" badge was nothing more than US propaganda.

Interestingly, VOA, RFA etc. are not labeled state-affiliated media. Edit: Actually VOA does have it now; I swear I checked just two days ago... Their various foreign language accounts still aren’t labeled though.

VOA is also labelled as "government funded", which implies less editorial control but personally sounds worse than affliated. The labelling is all over place.

Re: NPR quits Twitter after being labeled as 'state-affiliated media'

#327

Post by reset2023 »

spir wrote: post #16
segasaturn wrote: post #9

I wonder if this will have any domino effect, right now the only thing holding Twitter together is its network effects. According to the article on NPR's site[0], they have 8.7 million followers and run 52 different accounts so Twitter is losing a pretty important partner. Also, no mention of Mastodon in this announcement. It sounds like they're just going to use Facebook for the time being. 0: https://www.npr.org/20…

Last week, the Federal Reserve issued an important update on twitter. So no, I don't think twitter is worried about losing NPR. Twitter has the strongest network effects of any contemporary social network.

No dopamine hit with twitter anymore.

Re: NPR quits Twitter after being labeled as 'state-affiliated media'

#328

Post by samschooler »

kelipso wrote: post #52
euix wrote: post #22

Is NPR state funded? (real question - I actually don't know). What is the definition of state funded? Here in Canada all the media take government subsidies especially the big ones - a lot of that I think is the economics, they simply don't generate enough revenue on their own to sustain themselves so in the process of being subsidized by the federal govt they take on the viewpoint that can be considered statist. You…

34% of their budget comes from CPB, which is federal funding for local radio stations, and which NPR gets the money through local stations. They downplay this funding source and only mention the 1-4% that they get directly from local/state/federal government sources but clearly NPR would be dead without federal funding. [1] https://gigafact.org/fact-briefs/does-npr-receive-less-1-its...

This is still wrong though. From your source:

> NPR relies on the local stations' payments for 34% of its budget.

Local stations are not 100% government funded.

> CPB estimates its support provided 8.2% of the average station's budget in 2017, but it's more important to affiliates in smaller, rural markets.

If I do the math. An average station's budget is 8.2% from CPB, and 34% of the funding for NPR comes from local stations, taking that 8.2% of government money, and saying 8.2% of the 34% funding from local station it is 2.7% of NPR's budget from local stations. And 0.6% directly, so from _your source_ NPR is funded by 3.1% from CPB.

Re: NPR quits Twitter after being labeled as 'state-affiliated media'

#329

Post by jacquesm »

mfer wrote: post #287

> By David Folkenflik According to Wikipedia... > David Folkenflik ... is an American reporter based in New York City and serving as media correspondent for National Public Radio. Interesting conflict of interest in news reporting.

What conflict of interest do you perceive? Would you rather the article was by Rush Limbaugh or do you see any items in the article that you feel misrepresent reality and that this was done because of the reporters' bias?

Re: NPR quits Twitter after being labeled as 'state-affiliated media'

#330

Post by yamtaddle »

misssocrates wrote: post #10

> It receives less than 1 percent Why do they keep saying they receive almost nothing, yet at the same time say government funding is essential to their operation?

I think it has more to do with preserving the fiction that they're significantly more independent from commercial interests than other news media. Losing dedicated public funding would make them a commercial network that also begs for donations a few times a year, probably harming donation and removing some of the halo-effect that advertisers are looking for by "sponsoring" them (paying for ads).

In short, it'd push them farther out of the ad niche they've carved for themselves, which could have serious revenue consequences beyond that 1%.

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