Google threatens to cut off news after California proposes paying media outlets • Hacker News Board

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

#401

Post by asow92 » Sat, Apr 13, 2024, 3:01 PM UTC

g8oz wrote: post #293

1000100_1000101 wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 and Outbrain should be the subject of a Department of Justice inquiry. Their whole business model seems to be facilitating scammers.

I'm all for it, and while we're at it let's break up Google's ad monopoly, which is partially why we need Taboola in the first place.

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

#402

Post by leereeves » Sat, Apr 13, 2024, 3:02 PM UTC

specialist wrote: post #397

leereeves wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"But when the Mueller report found no credible evidence of collusion, NPR’s coverage was notably sparse. Russiagate quietly faded from our programming." That's no slap fight, those were serious allegations and the fact that they were false is equally important. NPR happily participated in spreading those left wing falsehoods, but was unwilling to spread the truth with equal vigor. I agree it's a shame that Uri had to…

What could NPR possibly add to any of those 3 food fights? In addition to the 100s of hours and 1,000s of column inches already wasted? New evidence, witnesses, analysis, pizza toppings, anything? Nope. Was yet another rehash more important than every thing else? There are 1,000s of newsworthy topics and issues every single day. Was relitigating the precise definition of "collusion" really the most important topic? A…

> The left, greens, socialists, grannies knitting for world peace, etc should all do the same [create their own media ecosystem]

You're proving my point there. Those are all relatively fringe groups, outside the mainstream of the Democratic party and the majority of elected officials. Prominent elected Democrats can rely on "the media" to get their message out and to protect them from criticism. (Both from the far-left and from the right, as we saw from their treatment of Bernie Sanders.)

The "right wing" (meaning mainstream Republicans and elected officials), had to create their own media because the "leans left" media will not report fairly about them. Twitter banned the POTUS. The NY Times forced an editor to resign for publishing an op-ed from a sitting Senator. And NPR targeted the President, according to that senior editor.

> Though it's weird they continue to say they're being ignored, when conservatives dominate every medium.

No one claimed they're being ignored. They're being attacked. When the left-leaning media, like NPR, covers conservatives, it's usually to take their statements and actions out of context and criticize them.

> Firstly, that the "news" actually be "new".

I agree completely, but we don't see much of that these days.

What we see is the neoliberal media chanting the neoliberal chorus, trying to silence both the right and (as you pointed out), the greens, socialists, and others to their left.

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

#403

Post by shepherdjerred » Sat, Apr 13, 2024, 3:14 PM UTC

sethammons wrote: post #334

shepherdjerred wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe this isn't quite the same thing, but I had been threatened with legal action in the past for linking to a site's public assets: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26550846

How did that story play out?

Ultimately I removed the deep links that allowed you to use third-party clients to stream the videos (e.g. VLC), so now you just have to use their very poor UI.

My site does still support searching, though, which they still haven't added after... four years.

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

#404

Post by mbrumlow » Sat, Apr 13, 2024, 3:15 PM UTC

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…

Last time I checked if you went in front of investors and said “hey, I want to make a business where nobody wants to pay, not even a dollar a year” you would be laughed out of the room.

So. I think that is your problem. Maybe make a business where people are wanting to pay for the content? Think about how much more money you would make!!!

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

#405

Post by asow92 » Sat, Apr 13, 2024, 3:20 PM UTC

mbrumlow wrote: post #404

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…

Last time I checked if you went in front of investors and said “hey, I want to make a business where nobody wants to pay, not even a dollar a year” you would be laughed out of the room. So. I think that is your problem. Maybe make a business where people are wanting to pay for the content? Think about how much more money you would make!!!

I agree with you completely, and there are voices within the organization advocating for that as well. Big legacy mainstream media companies move at a glacial pace and making that kind of change takes a lot of time and buy-in throughout the whole org chart.

And, somewhat counterintuitively, I think it's also important to note that sometimes what the journalists want to cover and content that people want and are willing to pay for aren't always the same thing. Additionally, sometimes what people want and are willing to pay for doesn't sit well with advertisers, so it is always a nuanced balancing act.

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

#406

Post by psychlops » Sat, Apr 13, 2024, 3:20 PM UTC

Cesura wrote: post #380

psychlops wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are Estonian? Few would consider it unethical to fund wars of self-defense. But self-defense is not a clear term, see for example the Bush Doctrine and preemptive war. America has a historical habit of funding its future enemies, and in more current wars of simply maintaining the status quo.

Not exactly, but I'm an American citizen who has lived in Estonia for the past ~5 years (and often read Estonian language media). One of the more unfortunate political outcomes I've noticed from the Bush era is a tendency for people to take the tragedies of US foreign policy in the Middle East and project them onto every conflict involving the US since then (this is not targeted at you). So you end up with well-inten…

Fascinating and unusual path you have taken. There are so few people in Estonia, I wasn't expecting you to actually be there.

You have an interesting point of view and given me food for thought, thank you.

Wrt to the present, I think the current (US) military actions are simply a means of moving wealth from one segment of the population to another without a need for transparency. Hence, less tax dollars should go in.

I'd prefer to regress to the time when our government needed to fund war by asking people to purchase liberty bonds.

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

#407

Post by asow92 » Sat, Apr 13, 2024, 3:30 PM UTC

teeray wrote: post #313

candiddevmike wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RE: 4, NPR seems to do OK, same with the BBC. You're choosing to implement all of these terrible things by continuing your employment, so you "not wanting them" is kind of moot. Find a different job if you genuinely don't agree with what you're building. I'm a firm believer that companies would stop doing this kind of crap if we, collectively as tech workers (even better as a union!), stopped implementing it .

If it’s lucrative enough for the company, they will find an apathetic contractor who will put $LOVECRAFTIAN_HORROR_JS on the site, cash their check, and move on to the next thing.

This is absolutely true.

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

#408

Post by xhkkffbf » Sat, Apr 13, 2024, 3:32 PM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #390

cout wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree; moreover, I don't even understand why there's any controversy. A set of weights for a network trained using a particular document is a derivative work.

When I attended college and got a degree in Mechanical Engineering, that didn’t make all my future design output a derivative work (legally). I don’t earn money from AI/LLM, but I tend to think that there’s a point past which the derivative nature of a type of summarization is not obviously a derivative of that entire corpus of work. (At least not in a sense that’s meaningful/practical.)

Certainly not all of it, but if you were to cut and paste some words from one of your textbooks, maybe change a few words, and then pass it off as your own, I would call you a plagiarist or a thief.

The NYT makes a credible argument that the AIs are just cutting and pasting from their training set, sometimes lining up words or phrases from different sources. There's a bit of synthesis going on, but not as much as you might do after 10 years on the job.

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

#409

Post by asow92 » Sat, Apr 13, 2024, 4:01 PM UTC

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.

In some states it is the law to single click cancel. In others it is not, and requires a phone call to cancel. It's not impossible to cancel, but they bank on people not wanting to call in. They'll also try to negotiate down your rate if you call in wanting to cancel.

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

#410

Post by specialist » Sat, Apr 13, 2024, 4:08 PM UTC

leereeves wrote: post #402

specialist wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What could NPR possibly add to any of those 3 food fights? In addition to the 100s of hours and 1,000s of column inches already wasted? New evidence, witnesses, analysis, pizza toppings, anything? Nope. Was yet another rehash more important than every thing else? There are 1,000s of newsworthy topics and issues every single day. Was relitigating the precise definition of "collusion" really the most important topic? A…

> The left, greens, socialists, grannies knitting for world peace, etc should all do the same [create their own media ecosystem] You're proving my point there. Those are all relatively fringe groups, outside the mainstream of the Democratic party and the majority of elected officials. Prominent elected Democrats can rely on "the media" to get their message out and to protect them from criticism. (Both from the far-le…

> neoliberal media chanting the neoliberal chorus

Agreed.

Most people misunderstood the role of NYT, WaPo, and NPR. They aren't left, right, up, widdershins, liberal, conservative, whatever.

Rather, their (self-appointed) role is to defend the status quo. aka the establishment, the beltway, the village.

NYT only looks "center-right" to me because I'm way far to the left, "left wing" to you because you're conservative. But those views aren't really helpful for understanding them. Those labels don't mean anything inside the bubble. (As revealed by their evergreen appeals for "bipartisanship", "compromise", and "consensus".)

--

Not that you asked, but there's a similar disconnect between the folk understanding of politics and how politicos behave.

I've run for office. Dialing for dollars, campaigning statewide, door belling, interviews, endorsements, messaging & framing, debate prep, costumes and makeup, all of it. Very illuminating. And now I totally get why everyone in that ecosystem behaves as they do.

Everyone should run for office, do some policy work, try to get published, etc. We'd all be better off if more people had first-hand experience in the sausage factory.