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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'

#421

Post by hklgny »

anigbrowl wrote: post #397
hklgny wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone likes to blame the server interface, but honestly that's not so bad and I think most people get over it. Mastodon's real problem in my opinion is that its primary audience today doesn't actually want anyone new to join - it's VERY toxic for newcomers who don't fit a specific mold. It's a shame, cause we really do need something new. I'm hoping some of the new decentralized ones take off. Edit: I think the co…

This is survivor bias. If you're a non-tech person signing up for a new service, the federation aspect is just wizard talk and it's not obvious what difference it makes. Most people do not want to go on side quests to find other people they know or figure out which digital village they live in, especially not as the first stage in the onboarding process.

Fair point, then I guess I'd adjust my comment to say "in ADDITION to the server issue....".

The reality is even once you're connected, it can be a rough place to explore for newcomers.

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

#422

Post by throwaway202303 »

bagels wrote: post #317

Should Twitter itself get a state sponsored label for getting concessions from San Francisco on their headquarters? https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/S-F-controller-hails-... Should Elon's account (or SpaceX or Telsa) have the same label because of their significant government funding? It's hard to see this as anything but silly politics games.

They don’t produce news so maybe no?

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

#424

Post by kylecordes »

mwsfc wrote: post #23
TigeriusKirk wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ragequitting is also degrading to NPR.

Not at all ragequitting and not degrading to NPR. Staying on the platform tacitly implies NPR accepts the label ...which would be degrading, from their perspective.

I think people should be slower to act.

Around the time they left, the label had already been improved to mention funding instead of affiliation.

If they could just be a bit chill about it, is quite possible within a month it might have been replaced with a approximate-percentage-funding label, which should not be particularly offensive.

Would be really slick to see all media accounts have company ownership / funding listed.

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

#425

Post by generic92034 »

DrThunder wrote: post #363
veec_cas_tant wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is also this part that you did not quote: >On average, less than 1% of NPR's annual operating budget comes in the form of grants from CPB and federal agencies and departments. It is irrelevant to most of the controversy, however. The original Twitter label declared that NPR did not have editorial independence from the government.

They don't. Just because you say you do doesn't make it so. When a big part of your funding comes from the people that can vote to cut it at any moment you do not have true independence. This is as silly as the argument saying the 1st amendment isn't violated by social media when you have the government literally asking these companies for censorship.

Can you name any media company being truly independent? Or is any owner excluded from the potential list of dependencies?

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

#426

Post by SilverBirch »

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.

It's always a bit strange when someone says they're not a fan of Elon and then proceed to give him an absurd level of benefit of the doubt by just eliding all the obvious facts that what he's doing is ridiculous and bad.

Government-sponsored was not a US propaganda badge, it was a response to a serious concern about adversarial governments influencing US debate through 3rd party cut outs. It's a difficult problem to solve but the previous employees made a good faith effort to come up with a definition and then enforce it. Musk, however, didn't do that. He took an official label with a definition that Twitter publicly discloses and applied it to a news organization he personally doesn't like despite it being completely inaccurate.

If what you're arguing, is that the label was bad, and badly or unevenly enforced what Musk has done is made it worse - not better. There's now no consistent definition, all the old organisations that were tagged are still tagged, and he's driven a bus through twitter's credibility.

Even if you accept that there was a genuine problem with the way the previous system was designed, there's simply no way to argue that Musk has improved it. And to be clear - the previous system was exactly what Musk claimed he wanted for twitter - a clear open definition you could point to, and labelling accounts rather than banning them in order to maximize free speech, if this system weren't in place before it is almost certain Musk would've loved it if a right wing bigot twitter user suggested it.

What you actually seem to be arguing is "Something should have been done, this was a thing, therefore this was the right thing to do".

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

#427

Post by obeyandunthink »

travisd wrote: post #343
eastbound wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strange that labelling medias with their true funding diminishes their credibility so much that they’d flee to any place where this information is not disclosed.

I suspect this is a bad-faith argument, but just to be clear, NPR get's a tiny fraction of its funding from the government *and* maintains editorial independence. > The news organization says that is inaccurate and misleading, given that NPR is a private, nonprofit company with editorial independence. It receives less than 1 percent of its $300 million annual budget from the federally funded Corporation for Public Br…

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

#428

Post by DrThunder »

afinlayson wrote: post #232
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.

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…

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

#429

Post by hot_gril »

hklgny wrote: post #280
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Everyone likes to blame the server interface, but honestly that's not so bad and I think most people get over it. Mastodon's real problem in my opinion is that its primary audience today doesn't actually want anyone new to join - it's VERY toxic for newcomers who don't fit a specific mold. It's a shame, cause we really do need something new. I'm hoping some of the new decentralized ones take off. Edit: I think the co…

Twitter has always been a cesspool. You're fighting not only other people but also the algorithm / popularity contest. I actually hate it and never want to go back, but for some it's engaging. People probably don't use Mastodon just cause nobody they care about is on it and the whole multi-instance thing is weird.
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