Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Push for a “PBS for the Internet”

axios.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 303 posts

Re: The Push for a “PBS for the Internet”

#131

Post by jameshart »

starkd wrote: post #38
rrose wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i understand the worry about the government gatekeeping disinformation/misinformation, but I think the worry is massively overblown. We're not talking about the government having a monopoly on the information ecosystem, and while there are certainly controversial topics where the government might be tempted to but their thumb on the scale if they had control over the news, the truth in most cases (climate change, the…

A politician you can theoretically "vote out of office" can be more insidious than big business ever could. Regarding a politician, only collective action can remedy the situation. At least, with business, you get immediate remedy by going elsewhere. And maybe eventual long term remedy if enough people do likewise. Of course, even big business can become too big as to stifle competition.

I don’t think I’ve ever given Dennis Prager any of my business yet that hasn’t stopped him using the money he does have to buy airtime in front of me. That kind of unaccountable media production seems far more insidious to me than anything government funded.

Re: The Push for a “PBS for the Internet”

#132

Post by sidlls »

dwhit wrote: post #70
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I suggest contributing to your local station Most PBS stations run infomercials promoting quack medicine. So long as they keep doing that I'll never give them a penny.

Ironically, if enough people gave them a penny they wouldn’t have to run those quack informercials.

Likely they'd just expand, like any other organization. PBS is somewhat better, but NPR is a cesspool of corporate sponsorship and journalism that's marginally better than some private, for-profit outlets but still generally low quality and scarcely informative.

Re: The Push for a “PBS for the Internet”

#133

Post by systemvoltage »

joemi wrote: post #123
systemvoltage wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Orthogonal: Can we pause for a moment and admire how amazing the PBS logo is? They've kept it for many years and haven't fallen to "trends". Here is some history: https://logos.fandom.com/wiki/PBS

I'm not sure what counts in your book as many years considering that page shows the latest one is from 2019. Also, not sure what counts as trends, considering their previous logo had a gradient added (which was trendy then, or a few years before then), and the current one is definitely a flat logo in comparison (which is also trendy, though it was a bigger trend a few years ago) and they changed the font drastically.…

Here is an example that went with the trends and destroyed the iconic mark of the Library of Congress: https://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/archives/new_log...

Library Library of Congress. Sad.

What they did with PBS logo is simlar to slight redesigns over the years - GE, Lufthansa, AMEX, VISA, MasterCard, etc.

Re: The Push for a “PBS for the Internet”

#134

Post by nobody9999 »

jonas21 wrote: post #88

If you look at the history of the Public Broadcasting Act [1] that established the CPB and eventually PBS, it seems clear that it was passed in response to poorly-funded educational programming not being able to compete with high-budget commercial network TV. Its authors wanted to make it easier for smaller, non-commercial entities to produce and distribute high-quality educational content. In that regard, the Intern…

>it seems clear that it was passed in response to poorly-funded educational programming not being able to compete with high-budget commercial network TV.

>The breadth and depth of educational content available just on YouTube is incredible.

It seems like the second statement I quoted shows the failure (at least on the Internet) of the first.

When we can have decentralized, or at least widely used non-profit distribution channels like PBS provides for TV, that will be a very good thing.

But as long as the primary distribution channels are focused on raking in the cash rather than providing access to good educational/cultural content for that purpose, the free exchange of ideas is at risk.

Re: The Push for a “PBS for the Internet”

#135

Post by ElevenLathe »

methodin wrote: post #126
CamTin wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't chase ratings, you're not chasing viewers, and you're not having much impact on discourse. The current toxic sludge of cable news sprouted up decades after public broadcasting had been around.

Why is having an impact on discourse important? It should not be the job of any media to alter arguments, viewpoints etc... it's job is to provide the facts for people to make their own opinions. The fact that we think media should be able to shape opinion is really the main problem here. Cable news chases profits and profits come from viewership which gets us into that negative feedback loop. Take away money and a l…

Why bother to exist at all (besides profiting) if nobody is changing their actions based on the reporting or programming you provide?

It's a fantasy that there was ever objective reporting, or that NPR/PBS was ever capable of producing it. All news media is propaganda and always has been. Even "liberal" outlets like NPR News spout extremely right wing, reactionary, pro-capital viewpoints while they pretend to dig deep for objective truth.

Smart political actors and media types have woken up to the fact that there isn't much value in pretending to be "fair and balanced" anymore. This is the reason why middle class people who think of themselves as centrists (meaning that they had accepted the liberal consensus which dominated popular media for decades) have begun decrying "polarization."

Moving beyond news content though, PBS also makes entertainment content. What does it mean to have a factual/objective version of /Arthur/? Do we need political officers in PBS Kids storyboarding sessions to make sure left wing concepts like sharing or feminism aren't accidentally introduced to the population?

Re: The Push for a “PBS for the Internet”

#137

Post by andrewmcwatters »

I had this exact idea years ago and shared it with colleagues in the tech sector in Phoenix, AZ. The primacy of the idea also stemmed from the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967[1] as discussed in this article.

We agreed on many common points, but could not think of how one would create an NPR-inspired version of essentially Reddit/Digg/Slashdot without first-party curation, which completely kills the idea of a social news aggregate.

I think unfortunately the idea is incompatible without heavy handed moderation. Hacker News seems to attract the rightish crowd, though, so maybe it can be done. NPR attracts the sort of crowd I'm looking for in a social news aggregator.

I'm not a teenager anymore. I'm looking for less memes and more interesting reading that publications of yesteryear seem to produce less and less of each year.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Broadcasting_Act_of_196...

Re: The Push for a “PBS for the Internet”

#138

Post by nobody9999 »

itgoon wrote: post #114
throwaway894345 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I donate to PBS for the streaming, but I wish they would update their content more frequently, or rather they have a lot of content that I don’t care much about (especially the local programming). Mostly I’m interested in the nature, science, and history documentaries, especially the nature and nova series, but they only show a new episode once every few weeks.

Have you looked at their YouTube channels? Eons and SpaceTime are excellent. EDIT: here's all of the channels: https://www.youtube.com/c/pbsdigitalstudios/channels

>Have you looked at their YouTube channels? Eons and SpaceTime are excellent.

I agree. Eons and Space Time are both excellent. I just hope they both start making new episodes soon.

I'd note that you can get those without YouTube's tracking/advertising by going right to the source[0] of those series.

[0] https://www.pbs.org/digital-studios/

Re: The Push for a “PBS for the Internet”

#139

Post by [deleted] »

lsiebert wrote: post #111
fud7r7rgtf wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What actually qualifies as misinformation? I see lots of things these days that fall under that label that would simply have been called gossip in the past and covered from the perspective of exploring popular gossip.

Examples of Misinformation: scientifically debunked ideas like the idea vaccines cause autism Ideas with zero basis in reality like the idea that most or all mass shootings are actually faked using "crisis actors" Political conspiracy theories like the idea that Bernie Sanders would have been the democratic candidate for president, but was cheated by Hillary Clinton. Misrepresented ideas, like how certain people on t…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN