271–280 of 493 posts
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If a blanket ban runs into this problem, what about a "ban by default"? Basically just flip the script so it doesn't require a denial based on circumstances but instead an approval based on circumstances.
This doesn’t work in practice due to typically severe time constraints. You cannot expect a business that has 6 days of life left to wait for such an approval process. These things never happen fast.
My absolutely inane contribution I'm sharing only because it contrasts with everyone else commenting: I think Goodreads is fine, I do glance at it before any book I read to see what kind of reviews it has. The Amazon site I used all the time that sucks now is IMDb.
Did you try enabling "Show reference view" setting? (Account Settings -> Content Settings)
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> So what happens to the mom and pop hardware store that's been running for 30 years when mom and pop want to retire? They just have to shut their doors? They could sell it to another mom and pop? It's only an M&A if the shop is bought by / becomes part of another business. If nobody wants to continue running the independent shop, it doesn't make much difference to consumers if a chain buys it, or if it closes down a…
If the only people who can buy businesses are individuals, you've cut the potential acquirer pool, and thus the value, by an enormous amount. > If nobody wants to continue running the independent shop, it doesn't make much difference to consumers if a chain buys it, or if it closes down and the chain just opens a new shop there. You're pointing out exactly why banning M&A would be good for big businesses. Now instead…
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Preventing fraud, not censorship. Writing a fake review of a book that hasn't even been finished written yet is fraud.
A review of a book that hasn't been published that explains why I don't think the subject is appropriate for a book, how I don't like the author, and what I think about the author's previous opinions about the subject isn't "fake" or "fraud," it's discussion that virtually all intelligent people can handle. "Fake" and "fraud" are words that you're adding to the article. ----- edit: I feel like it's important to menti…
Generally, I'm wary of attempts to address 'review bombing' (besides standard anti-botting measures) because it seems like accusations of review bombing have become a sort of general cope employed by creators whenever their thing gets a negative reception. It's common to de-legitimize contrary points of view by calling people dehumanizing terms like 'troll', when in fact those people probably earnestly feel that way (they aren't trolling.) If I know the earth is round but I pretend to think the earth is flat to get a rise out of people, that's trolling. But if I'm a halfwit who earnestly thinks the earth is flat, and I say so, that's not trolling. The difference between these won't necessarily be apparent from the text of the review itself; how then do you separate the trolls from the people you disagree with? On an individual basis you can go with your gut or look that person up, but that doesn't scale up to classifying thousands of reviews. What creators are really asking for is the privilege to curate the reviews themselves, but that isn't a reasonable privilege to grant because it would completely devalue reviews for consumers.
Do what needs to be done to combat botting, use captchas or account verification or whatever works. But after that? Let the reviews fall where they may. Creators will cry that the bad reviews aren't legitimate because the reviewers are [dehumanizing term], but there's nothing that can reasonably be done about this.
My personal theory is that this stems from many disjointed experiments where the experimentation is viewed as being more important than anything else. Their mission is to deliver revenue, or some other metric, that isn't visible to users, so perhaps they do achieve their goals.
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As others have pointed out, alternatives do exist. They just lack the network effect. I've recently moved to Bookwyrm. I was able to move import my Goodreads list, although many books were missing. Any new books i'm reading, go on Bookwyrm first. I had to add the ISBN details etc. for some. It's a bit of work initially, but atleast i feel my contribution is going to a non-walled garden. ---- https://joinbookwyrm.com/…
Beware that Bookwyrm is neither Open Source (as per OSI definition) nor Free Software (per FSF definition). It is legally impossible for a lot of people to deploy it, I think it even include myself (I am employed by a company, does it counts as "laboring for myself" in my country?)
I went and looked at the license. https://github.com/bookwyrm-social/bookwyrm/blob/main/LICENS...
Comment from the author. https://github.com/bookwyrm-social/bookwyrm/issues/2152
Eh, Goodreads has always suffered from the same problem that plagues every other review system which uses "score out of X" ranking. Humans just aren't very good at ranking things on a normal distribution, so you invariably end up with every item (books in this case) being ranked somewhere in the 3.5-4.5 range (since Goodreads is out of 5). For IMDB the rankings all hover around 8ish. When in reality the average book…
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If the only people who can buy businesses are individuals, you've cut the potential acquirer pool, and thus the value, by an enormous amount. > If nobody wants to continue running the independent shop, it doesn't make much difference to consumers if a chain buys it, or if it closes down and the chain just opens a new shop there. You're pointing out exactly why banning M&A would be good for big businesses. Now instead…
Why is a buyout even the only option? Just find new management. Keep it in the family. Turn it into a co-op. There’s also such as a thing as community businesses, apparently.
Sometimes people want to exit. They want to retire, move onto a new chapter of their lives and not be involved in the business anymore.
Finding new management doesn't allow that - they can take on the day to day, but you still own the place and are ultimately responsible.
Keeping it in the family isn't an option if you don't have family that want it. If you have multiple family members that want it, you can give it to one and probably cause conflict, or you can have them share management/ownership of it and probably also cause conflict.
Turn it into a co-op? What if the owners have no idea how to do this? What if they don't want to?
Why should people who have created a business not be allowed to sell it and cash out? Why can't they get a payoff for their investment and move on? The solutions you're proposing are all about the community and totally ignore the actual people who spent years of their life getting the business going and probably took meaningful financial risk to do so. Why should we just ignore their desires and tell them what they're allowed to do with their business?
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Unfortunately that's exactly why so many startups get bought. Not to become part of the parent company's business, no, just not to become a competitor later. Would stronger (and enforced) anti trust laws be a solution? I believe businesses would just lie and say they are going to be part of the business but then just bury them anyway.
> I believe businesses would just lie and say they are going to be part of the business but then just bury them anyway. That's where my pet antitrust solution succeeds where others fail: ban all M&A. Companies only engage in mergers to consolidate market share, but their market share consolidation (i.e. monopolization) not only decreases competition, but also comes at the expense of employees and customers of the acq…
This is important, because it means that new companies that compete with the monopolies have many paths to success. If the only possible outcomes are "beat Amazon" and "fail hard", you won't get many attempts; it's better to get an entry-level job at Amazon and climb the ladder.
So yeah, monopolies are bad, but banning M&A only helps them.