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Vice website is shutting down

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Re: Vice website is shutting down

#71

They ran out of dangerous places to do designer drugs. In all honesty, Vice was a cool outlet for out-there stories for teens and adults alike. Shame it’s shutting down but then again I never supported it.

Channel 5 on YouTube has picked up where they left off.

Yeah I was about to say, though I'm getting a bit worried that as Andrew grows more successful and grows his operation, the more it will start to resemble a traditional news outlet (much as Vice did in the later years).

In any case, I'm hoping once Channel 5 grows big enough they can relaunch Hamilton's Pharmacopeia (though by a different name, of course).

Re: Vice website is shutting down

#72

It makes no sense to not let the site online in an archived form, for the posterity It wouldn't even be a significant cost and ads would recoup it anyway There should be a way to donate a website to the Internet Archive so that they run an online archive on it, basically keeping the site frozen forever (rather than relying on the Wayback Machine which has worse UX)

I’d literally love that idea; it’s a really compelling concept but my first concern would be the potential risk licensing/copyright issues that could arise from the original site owners transferring the site to IA. But seriously that would be so cool to see one day. I came across this thread on DataHoarders before seeing it here and was glad to see so many jump at the opportunity to help archive it on our own ends. I…

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Re: Vice website is shutting down

#73

It makes no sense to not let the site online in an archived form, for the posterity It wouldn't even be a significant cost and ads would recoup it anyway There should be a way to donate a website to the Internet Archive so that they run an online archive on it, basically keeping the site frozen forever (rather than relying on the Wayback Machine which has worse UX)

> It wouldn't even be a significant cost and ads would recoup it anyway I 100% don't get it when websites with lots of content and good SEO just delete everything. Fatwallet (fuck you Rakuten). Yahoo Answers (hey, I didn't say good content). Even on my own Drupal blogs that I didn't want to maintain/update anymore, I did a giant curl job, recursively regex'd out the login/comment submission fields and dumped them on…

I don't understand why publishers take down Kindle books when the paper book goes out of print. It happened to one of my favorite scifi novels.

It takes zero effort to keep the book available (I know, I self-published a silly little one), and zero effort to include it in your accounting as long as there's a data feed and a computer.

Re: Vice website is shutting down

#74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It makes no sense to not let the site online in an archived form, for the posterity >It wouldn't even be a significant cost and ads would recoup it anyway Just so you know... investors would probably think it's just a waste of time, which means a waste of money as they (or their financial handlers) would have to keep an eye on this website. Remember, if they think this website is going to make them under $XX an hou…

They just sell it for $1m or whatever to some company that specialises in running these kinds of sites. They exist.

Do investors know that they exist? I feel like this is something that will only happen if the archive-er actively make contact and persuade the current website owner that it's worth it to make the deal.

Re: Vice website is shutting down

#75
post #63

People still don't realize how many things from the last fifteen years were LIRPs. Low interest rate phenomena doomed the moment investors can get a halfway-decent yield from fixed-income investments.

Its odd to think that both Silicon Valley and Vice were from the same phenomenon, but it does track (radical entrepreneurial libertarian "world-changing" businesses).

But yeah, the whole neoliberal environment just produced a lot of bullshit in the end (in the developed countries). But I don't think, fortunately, the reaction to neoliberalism is going to stymy creativity at all, I think many are ready to embrace a new kind of economy.

Re: Vice website is shutting down

#76
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did some work for a design agency that got bought by Twitter.... we basically converted all their different sites to full static and put them on ice. It would have been expensive to keep hosting how they had been, but with everything flattened to static it's super cheap to keep up (although no publishing new stuff without some by hand work or restoring the old servers). All the good articles and design samples stay…

That liability seems really easily solved with a banner.

yeah, newspapers do this all the time. Could also regex the dates to show up really large.

Re: Vice website is shutting down

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It wouldn't even be a significant cost and ads would recoup it anyway I 100% don't get it when websites with lots of content and good SEO just delete everything. Fatwallet (fuck you Rakuten). Yahoo Answers (hey, I didn't say good content). Even on my own Drupal blogs that I didn't want to maintain/update anymore, I did a giant curl job, recursively regex'd out the login/comment submission fields and dumped them on…

Or even Digg... Lots of comments and discussions lost.

This is why I post on slashdot. They've passed the test of time (but not UIs, fuck beta). Looks like their first posts in '97 start here: https://slashdot.org/?page=8582 dunno what their december 31st, 1969 posts are after that (errors? intentional de-ranking?)

Newspapers have a bad history of "experimenting" with enabling online comments and then deciding the experiment failed and delete them all. You're a newspaper, you're not supposed to delete history when you don't like it!!!

And then they complain when people use social media as their newspaper.

Re: Vice website is shutting down

#78
post #35

They have 18,000,000 subscribers on YouTube... how can they not have enough money to host a website and pay some people to create content?... RIP Epicly Later'd?

18M YouTube subscribers can sustain a decent business, sure, but not one with 3000+ employees.

What? Why on earth does Vice have 3000 employees? I thought publishing companies long since switched to having all their content creators freelance.

Edit: I thought OP was exaggerating, but nope, per this random website they have/had at least 2,300.

https://rocketreach.co/vice-media-profile_b5c6f6cef42e0cd9

Re: Vice website is shutting down

#79
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They just sell it for $1m or whatever to some company that specialises in running these kinds of sites. They exist.

I'm in the "this decision is stupid" camp, but just playing devil's advocate here, they might not want to risk damaging their brand by letting some third party agency mishandle their website

Don't include the brand in the deal, just the content?

Re: Vice website is shutting down

#80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Channel 5 on YouTube has picked up where they left off.

Yeah I was about to say, though I'm getting a bit worried that as Andrew grows more successful and grows his operation, the more it will start to resemble a traditional news outlet (much as Vice did in the later years). In any case, I'm hoping once Channel 5 grows big enough they can relaunch Hamilton's Pharmacopeia (though by a different name, of course).

I think he's principled enough to keep creative direction on it. And just like with All Gas No Brakes, if someone else takes ownership and he disagrees with their vision for the content, he'll just move to a different channel or platform. His fans are devoted enough that they'd follow him.
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