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Google threatens to cut off news after California proposes paying media outlets

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Re: Google threatens to cut off news after California proposes paying media outlets

#351

Post by jwally »

visarga wrote: post #340
pompino wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>who apply every possible bloated inefficient awful ad/tracking/targeting/react/javascript spawn of satan into their site as possible, all written by the worst programmers in the world They do this because Google wants them to, so that their ranking goes up.

I opened the Google app on my phone to read the news feed, 9 out of 10 articles were unreadable under the cookie popups, floating videos I didn't even click to start playing, and other helpful offers getting in the way. It's shit, utter shit. Why don't they have "reading mode" to show only the text, I bet they are afraid of getting sued if they supported clean text like the HN app I have installed. On the laptop I al…

I've used firefox with adblock/ublock since I first learned about it 20-ish years ago. I have a vpn on my phone primarily because I can do dns adblocking. I gave up most news and social media around COVID times, and haven't watched ad supported tv in 10 years (oh god, I sound like the uni-bomber; lol) - so I forget how bad the cacophony of advertising is for normal people. That everyone who can doesn't instantly install an adblocker on their browser (I think its like ~30-50%) still blows me away...

/rant

Re: Google threatens to cut off news after California proposes paying media outlets

#353

Post by bionhoward »

visarga wrote: post #339
cush wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> news publishers have spent the last couple decades making their websites absolutely unusable To appease Google… Conversely, NYTs site is stellar. It’s fast and gorgeous and the articles are well-written and not full of clickbait and SEO spam. The games have no ads and there’s nothing pushing you to read more. No feed. No algorithm. NYT got the hell away from SEO and focus on the customers, who decide with their wal…

Since they sued OpenAI for copyright infringement I actively avoid them. I don't find them reasonable anymore.

What is unreasonable about not wanting your news organization to be ripped off for free?

What is reasonable about OpenAI’s “we learn fairly from everyone’s IP, but paying customers may not train competing models with outputs we gave them?”

Imagine you paid a teacher and they said you weren’t allowed to teach someone else what they teach you, while they are actively teaching you things that other people taught them, and they’re so new at teaching, you wind up teaching them. Seems legit

Re: Google threatens to cut off news after California proposes paying media outlets

#354

Post by fma »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #297
asow92 wrote: post #258

Earlier 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…

I'll pay $50 a year, but I better be able to cancel with a single click and no criminal shenanigans with fraudulent charges thereafter.

My local library system offers digital access to WSJ, NY Times and many other periodicals. You may want to see if yours does too.

Re: Google threatens to cut off news after California proposes paying media outlets

#355

Post by specialist »

leereeves wrote: post #286
chris_wot wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NPR is pretty high quality. You just don’t like what they publish.

I guess you missed the op-ed written by a senior NPR editor recently. He admitted that NPR suppressed stories because they might help Trump and pursued poorly sourced (and ultimately false) stories because they would hurt Trump. https://www.thefp.com/p/npr-editor-how-npr-lost-americas-tru...

What more could NPR say about those slap fights (Hunter Biden, COVID-19) that wasn't already beaten to death by the credulous corporate media? Is every news outlet required to be subsumed by the right-wing noise machine's narrative?

Uri turning to Bari to air his grievances is pretty much all any one needs to know about his POV.

Re: Google threatens to cut off news after California proposes paying media outlets

#356

Post by asow92 »

Thiez wrote: post #350
asow92 wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about news specific to your locale?

Definitely not. Nothing noteworthy happens locally, and if it does it will be on the national news.

You have no interest at all in if cronyism is affecting your local politics? Do you care about how your taxes are spent?

Re: Google threatens to cut off news after California proposes paying media outlets

#357

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 »

asow92 wrote: post #258
notatoad wrote: post #178

Earlier 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…

I think part of the issue is that news does not seem to equal valuable information. Subscriptions, where a person has paying followers due to expertise in his particular domain do exist though. The difference is that they apparently offer value to the followers.

The issue is value. 1$ is too high, because most of the news right now are, and I am being charitable, opinion pieces. I have an opinion too. In fact, there is no shortage of opinions on the market. The market has spoken that opinions are worth less than 1$ a year.

Now, media companies do have an opportunity now to distinguish themselves as gatekeepers ( and a source of truth ) from AI generated stuff, but I am too cynical to seriously consider it as a possible outcome.

Re: Google threatens to cut off news after California proposes paying media outlets

#358

Post by rayiner »

spondylosaurus wrote: post #338
scarab92 wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately the more news-worthy stories also suffer from a severe lack of viewpoint diversity. Audiences are already very familiar with the ideological narratives emanating from the NYT newsroom. It’s fine as flavour, but the NYT are so heavy handed with it that often the substance of the articles are distorted to fit the narrative.

Which "ideological narratives"? This is such a vague description that you could interpret it to mean anything, especially since the NYT has been getting blasted from all directions lately. Conservatives think it's left-leaning drivel, and progressives think it capitulates too much to viewpoints on the right.

Progressives are 6% of the population: https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2021/11/09/progressive-.... The NYT could be very left leaning and still get criticism from a small percentage of the population that’s even further left.

One example: the NYT fired its opinion page editor for publishing an article by Tom Cotton calling to suppress the George Floyd riots with the National Guard. For context, calling in the Maryland National Guard to stop the Freddie Gray riots was one of the most popular things Larry Hogan ever did in that blue state. Cotton’s opinion was squarely in the mainstream, and by firing Bennett the NYT revealed itself to be quite far to the left.

Another example is anything touching on affirmative action. Americans oppose taking race into account in hiring to increase diversity by a 3:1 margin. It’s an extremely unpopular and out-of-the-mainstream position. But the NYT engages in such hiring practices. And when you read the NYT’s coverage of such issues, including the supreme court’s decision in SFFA, it’s clear where the paper’s bias lies.

This bias manifests in the way articles talk about events. For one thing, it’s quite obvious from the tone of the article what the author thinks about particular policies or events. An article about Biden’s declining support among minorities, for example, might be framed as a bad thing, instead of a positive development. You will also get selective use of what policies are labeled as “liberal” or “conservative.” Restricting abortion gets labeled as a “conservative” position (which it is), but affirmative action doesn’t get labeled as a “liberal position (which it is). You’ll also see a difference in when public opinion polling is disclosed. Articles on Dobbs heavily featured public opinion in favor of legalized abortion. But articles in SFFA usually didn’t mention longstanding polling opposing racial preferences.

Re: Google threatens to cut off news after California proposes paying media outlets

#359

Post by lupire »

Ferret7446 wrote: post #215
babypuncher wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There's nothing wrong with that. Only expression is covered by copyright; re-interpretation/summarizing isn't.

If your definition of "wrong" is merely "what the law currently says", California has released a patch update to your moral code.

Re: Google threatens to cut off news after California proposes paying media outlets

#360

Post by asow92 »

g8oz wrote: post #291
asow92 wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NPR is very biased: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/11/business/media/npr-critic... And to be honest, I don't think most of these things are terrible per se, albeit mildly annoying. Also, I don't see what you're suggesting as realistic, but idealistic. You can try to unionize developers, but good luck with that because you'll just be replaced with overseas contractors. I'd rather keep my job and feed my family, thank…

Do you call that NPR story proof of a bias worse than what happens at other institutions? Or because it's biased in the direction that doesn't align with your views?

If NPR only represents a fraction of our nation’s viewpoints, they are not living up to their namesake of national public radio. If they wanted to call themselves progressive public radio I’d take no issue.
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