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On Wordle, the NYT, and Antitrust

semiotech.substack.com

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Re: On Wordle, the NYT, and Antitrust

#41

Post by zeroonetwothree »

tablespoon wrote: post #15
zeroonetwothree wrote: post #2

Definitely thought it was ironic the NYT bought a “competitor” after constantly complaining about big tech doing it over the years.

> Definitely thought it was ironic the NYT bought a “competitor” after constantly complaining about big tech doing it over the years. You shouldn't conflate the New York Times Company with the people who write articles for the New York Times (or even its editorial board). They're not the same entity. Apologies if somehow that's not actually what you're doing, but my experience is when someone talks about the "NYT com…

Social media gets constantly criticized for views expressed by individuals on their platforms (often by NYT or other media!). Why shouldn't we be able to do the same to traditional media companies?

Re: On Wordle, the NYT, and Antitrust

#43

Post by omnicognate »

margalabargala wrote: post #35
omnicognate wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted in that article: > Creator of Wordle: I can’t keep running this thing; I love the NYT puzzle peeps, they inspired me to make this thing you love, so I sold it to them! Twitter: How dare you give this thing we love a sustaining home! > Honestly, people. The choice isn’t between Wordle as it exists today and NYT Wordle. It is between no Wordle and NYT Wordle, or even worse, a much crummier acquirer. Absolute hor…

You cut the quote too early and fully changed the author's meaning. The author isn't talking about the financial costs of running the site. As you noted, those are near zero. The "cost" referred to is the emotional/psychological one of suddenly being responsible for something that millions of people feel very passionate about. That's a non-zero cost for many people, and not a cost that everyone may want to take on.

(To avoid confusion, I edited my comment to add "(and effort)" just before the reply above was posted.)

The article goes on to say it "costs Wardle a few bucks a day to host", which is an overestimate possibly by a factor of infinity, depending how he's hosting it.

As for the effort, there is none. Part of the genius of wordle is that it is zero maintenance.*

And as for the "psychological burden" do you have any evidence besides a statement made after the nyt paid him over a million dollars for it that there was any such burden? This guy has invented massively popular things before: The Button and The Place at Reddit.

For that matter, any evidence that the statement wasn't simply written by the NYT for him and a condition of his offer? In it he says it's important to him that "... as Wordle grows, it continues to provide a great experience to everyone" - that just doesn't ring true. He never showed any intention of expanding it functionally, and its expansion in terms of user base requires no action at all from him as there is no infrastructure to scale. And he knows this, of course, having developed it.

Finally, even if somehow in the absence of any maintenance effort the "psychological burden" of owning it was too much it didn't need a 7 figure knight in shining armour to save him from it. People are running clones everywhere. Any number of people would have gladly taken it off his hands.

* This is easy to verify. You can just save the page to disk, point any webserver at it and it works perfectly. No DB, no server-side logic or state of any kind.

Re: On Wordle, the NYT, and Antitrust

#44

Post by lotsofpulp »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #22
ChrisLTD wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's part of the author's point. These acquisitions happen early enough that it's not clear whether or not Instagram, Wordle, etc. would be competitive businesses. However, I don't want to work in a regulatory environment that says I can't sell my small business to some larger company on the off chance it might some day be significant on its own.

Perhaps there is a company size which is just too big to make acquisitions because the risk of stifling competition is too great. Or make any purchases of companies in markets that don't have enough competition.

What is the size of a company? Net income? Market cap? Number of employees?

Re: On Wordle, the NYT, and Antitrust

#48

Post by omnicognate »

imgabe wrote: post #37
omnicognate wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't blame him in the slightest for taking the money - I would have too - but Mr. Wardle didn't need to be compensated for his "work". He wrote it as a (beautifully crafted) bit of fun, with no desire for or expectation of payment. You couldn't wish for a clearer demonstration of the fallacy of assuming nobody will create anything unless they're "incentivised" to do so. It wasn't work, it was play.

He wrote it for one person. He didn’t ask to be the focus of millions of people’s attention. Even if that attention is mostly positive that is a lot to deal with just in the sheer volume of messages, let alone the possibility of unhinged people thinking he wants to marry them or that he’s sending them coded messages in Wordle or whatever. Even if it's simple to host with that much traffic it's bound to be a headache.…

As I said I don't blame him in the slightest for selling it. Did I give the impression I did?

I'm counteracting two claims I see repeated a lot on this:

1. That he wouldn't have written it without the expectation of being paid. He did in fact do so, so that's obviously nonsense.

2. That without the NYT buying it it wouldn't have survived. It would, even if the original dev no longer wanted to be involved. Any number of people would gladly host it.

Re: On Wordle, the NYT, and Antitrust

#49

Post by omnicognate »

pseudalopex wrote: post #46
zeroonetwothree wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How could it possibly be illegal? There is no IP protection for Date % words.length

Copyright. Wardle and his partner chose the words.

That's what I'd expect, copyright on the word list. However, IANAL and I would love to see some proper analysis on the legal status of clones, especially identical ones with the same word list.

You can have a perfect clone of wordle running in a couple of minutes, but I'm certain that would be copyright infringement.

Re: On Wordle, the NYT, and Antitrust

#50

Post by pseudalopex »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #41
tablespoon wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Definitely thought it was ironic the NYT bought a “competitor” after constantly complaining about big tech doing it over the years. You shouldn't conflate the New York Times Company with the people who write articles for the New York Times (or even its editorial board). They're not the same entity. Apologies if somehow that's not actually what you're doing, but my experience is when someone talks about the "NYT com…

Social media gets constantly criticized for views expressed by individuals on their platforms (often by NYT or other media!). Why shouldn't we be able to do the same to traditional media companies?

They didn't say you can't criticize. They explained why it wouldn't be ironic even if the comparison made sense. Editorial independence is expected.
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