lol
Google threatens to cut off news after California proposes paying media outlets
271–280 of 448 posts
Re: Google threatens to cut off news after California proposes paying media outlets
#272Earlier quoted context omitted.
>I have sympathy for news publishers i have very little sympathy for news publishers. I have sympathy for the journalists actually doing journalism, but news publishers have spent the last couple decades making their websites absolutely unusable, so that unless somebody links to an article externally there's almost no point in going to their site directly. And even after you've followed that link it's almost impossib…
As a developer who works for one of these news publishers you have little sympathy for, what I can tell you is that: 1) Most people don't want to pay for news. Even $1/year is too high. 2) Ad CPMs are low—especially on iOS thanks to Apple's ATT—so we need more ads to make the same amount of revenue. 3) "SEO clickbait" (especially Taboola) helps keep the lights on. Click at your own peril. 4) If governments pay news o…
> 3) "SEO clickbait" (especially Taboola) helps keep the lights on. Click at your own peril.
Sure, stand your customer base in a mine-field for some minor short-sighted profit. Implement this at your own peril.
Re: Google threatens to cut off news after California proposes paying media outlets
#273I’m failing to see a downside of them doing that. The news is poisoning people, either left or right.
Re: Google threatens to cut off news after California proposes paying media outlets
#274Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a developer who works for one of these news publishers you have little sympathy for, what I can tell you is that: 1) Most people don't want to pay for news. Even $1/year is too high. 2) Ad CPMs are low—especially on iOS thanks to Apple's ATT—so we need more ads to make the same amount of revenue. 3) "SEO clickbait" (especially Taboola) helps keep the lights on. Click at your own peril. 4) If governments pay news o…
> 3) "SEO clickbait" (especially Taboola) helps keep the lights on. Click at your own peril. Sure, stand your customer base in a mine-field for some minor short-sighted profit. Implement this at your own peril.
Taboola is used by USA Today, NBC, Business Insider, MSN, Yahoo, Bloomberg, CBS News, ABC News, and more. Also, I wouldn't call Taboola revenue minor.
You also have to understand that half of our customers are advertisers, not just readers.
Re: Google threatens to cut off news after California proposes paying media outlets
#275Earlier quoted context omitted.
At some point someone is actually doing journalism though (in the best case at least.) News outlets that summarize things from e.g. Reuters or AP tend to have agreements which pay money for the information. You could reasonably argue that google should be doing the same, right?
I think the reality is that journalism was a ridiculously inefficient business. A big national event happens. News organizations collectively send 30 different reporters to the scene. Those 30 reporters each write up a firsthand story. Now hundreds of smaller news organizations (local papers, local TV news stations, etc.) rewrite it in their own words and put it in their version. In the end, for any major story you e…
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Re: Google threatens to cut off news after California proposes paying media outlets
#276I have sympathy for news publishers but I worry a lot about the principle of asserting that linking to something is an act that the link target has proprietary rights to over. At some level, it is almost a free speech issue. If I can't refer to what you are saying, without owing you something, you have power over not just my speech, but a power to limit how your work is subjected to criticism and debate. It's effecti…
If it was just plain hyperlinks, I would agree with you. Google is scraping metadata and articles, and summarizing them so that most people never even need to click the link. Google is getting most of the value from the articles written while not doing the actual work to make them. The whole thing could have been avoided if Google and social media stopped embedding previews and summaries everywhere. It's worse in pla…
I'm looking at news.google.com right now, and I am not finding any summarization being done by Google. Where are you seeing that?
Re: Google threatens to cut off news after California proposes paying media outlets
#277Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is no difference between content/link farms and what Google is doing - its copy/pasting someone else's words on a website and surrounding them with ads. _Neither_ are deserving of fair-use protections.
Google News does not show ads.
Re: Google threatens to cut off news after California proposes paying media outlets
#278Earlier quoted context omitted.
If Google was doing what news sites did, it would have journalists writing articles, researching data, investigating, etc. Yet they do none of that . Your statement is absurd.
I kinda wonder at what point would Google enter the field by sucking AFP's feed, auto filtering it and AI generate articles. Yahoo News wasn't that, but a search engine getting into the news business would not be unprecedented.
I believe they're working on it
https://www.adweek.com/media/google-paying-publishers-unrele...
Re: Google threatens to cut off news after California proposes paying media outlets
#279Earlier quoted context omitted.
>I have sympathy for news publishers i have very little sympathy for news publishers. I have sympathy for the journalists actually doing journalism, but news publishers have spent the last couple decades making their websites absolutely unusable, so that unless somebody links to an article externally there's almost no point in going to their site directly. And even after you've followed that link it's almost impossib…
> I have sympathy for the journalists actually doing journalism You know that with Substack all these actual journalists are having no issue getting paid very well. I'm not sure why we'd want to expand NPR or make more NPR's. We need less of their low-quality and biased journalism IMO, not more.
NPR is pretty high quality. You just don’t like what they publish.
Re: Google threatens to cut off news after California proposes paying media outlets
#280Earlier quoted context omitted.
>I have sympathy for news publishers i have very little sympathy for news publishers. I have sympathy for the journalists actually doing journalism, but news publishers have spent the last couple decades making their websites absolutely unusable, so that unless somebody links to an article externally there's almost no point in going to their site directly. And even after you've followed that link it's almost impossib…
As a developer who works for one of these news publishers you have little sympathy for, what I can tell you is that: 1) Most people don't want to pay for news. Even $1/year is too high. 2) Ad CPMs are low—especially on iOS thanks to Apple's ATT—so we need more ads to make the same amount of revenue. 3) "SEO clickbait" (especially Taboola) helps keep the lights on. Click at your own peril. 4) If governments pay news o…
> 1) Most people don't want to pay for news. Even $1/year is too high.
Alternatives to increasing advertisements have been tried and found to work. However, these approaches may not be feasible for all publications—especially local news outlets that may not have as many resources. These approaches are to:
i) Start selling other services besides news. The New York Times—one of the most currently financially successful newspapers—has found a lot of success in its Games section. This was famously seen in their acquisition of Wordle, though this has already been popular with their Crosswords section. The company has also found success with its Recipes section. (This is not the only reason behind their financial success, but it's a significant part of their strategy.)
ii) Focus on financial news, which lets the publication frame their reports as having a financial value that arguably exceeds the subscription price. The Financial Times is also a highly profitable newspaper today, with one of the highest-priced subscription prices that can be about $500 USD a year for a standard subscription (depending on one's region). The Wall Street Journal similarly charges a high subscription price. Both are seen as important resources for well-funded companies to buy group subscriptions for. (Once more, this isn't the only reason for their success, but it's a major factor.)
iii) Focus on a specialized, niche area of reporting that other publications can't or won't cover—ideally appealing to institutions or large audiences willing to spend money. For example, several publications in Canada focus on providing detailed reports on federal politics (such as The Hill Times and iPolitics), which is useful information for their readership that fills a gap by less-frequent reports from the country's main newspapers—this lets them charge high subscription prices. The Athletic also used to be financially successful by standing out with its sports-only reporting, which led to its acquisition by The New York Times. These specialized publications can charge more, because certain audiences find these reports financially valuable.
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However, a major drawback to thinking about news through the lens of financial value is that many important news stories don't have financial value. While an outlet can attempt to use one of these approaches to subsidize the rest of their stories, it's also costly. It's usually not feasible for many local newspapers to fund the software development of a Games section (especially as this would need to compete with all the other online alternatives for one's attention).
It's also pricey to offer competitive enough salaries to create a newsroom to compete with The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Bloomberg. However, it's not impossible—there have been a few alternative publications that have found success by focusing on a niche, such as business news in a country outside of the US, or focusing on a sector such as biotech for the publication STAT.
It's a tough problem to try and fund local news. There is civic value for one's community to have a platform for providing a check against corruption by various institutions—yet in practice, oftentimes not enough for most local residents purchase subscriptions. Alternatives to support local news can include funding (such as through taxes), but that makes the outlet reliant on government funding, which is subject to change (and the perception, real or not, that the outlet is less independent from the government).
Increasing advertisements seems like a short-term solution for local news outlets trying to stay afloat, but it's hard for me to see this as a long-term solution for sufficient funding.