Lawmakers Want to Protect Local Newspapers From Google, Facebook • Hacker News Board

Re: Lawmakers Want to Protect Local Newspapers From Google, Facebook

#51

Post by wombatmobile » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 4:02 PM UTC

specialist wrote: post #50

wombatmobile wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like this to happen. Not sure Apple would see it this way, particularly since they have a certain relationship with Google that is riven with quid pro quo's. Also, people at Apple might have other ideas about where to fling their cash. How much did you say this would cost? To save journalism from extinction. Per annum?

I was just wondering how to size the imaginary Apple Community Trust (ACT) fund. Provisionally assume peak journalism in the 1970s was 200,000 reporters. Let's low ball double that for production and support (proofreading, factcheckers, web masters). +400,000. Add 20% for admin overhead. +120,000. So aspirational "full" employment is 620,000. Guesstimate $120k yearly benefits (salary, healthcare, coffee). Punt on exp…

OK. Those headcount might be high for USA, but if ACT acts globally then perhaps the numbers are in the ballpark.

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/04/20/u-s-newsroo...

"From 2008 to 2019, overall newsroom employment in the U.S. dropped by 23%, according to the new analysis. In 2008, there were about 114,000 newsroom employees – reporters, editors, photographers and videographers – in five industries that produce news: newspaper, radio, broadcast television, cable and “other information services” (the best match for digital-native news publishers). By 2019, that number had declined to about 88,000, a loss of about 27,000 jobs."

Re: Lawmakers Want to Protect Local Newspapers From Google, Facebook

#52

Post by joshuamorton » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 5:19 PM UTC

roblabla wrote: post #42

GuB-42 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is possible to create pages that load fast on mobile without it. Sure, except few people do. And Google seized the opportunity here. Most of the times, the AMP site is faster, there is real value added for the end user, and Google used that positive experience to sneak in their stuff. It would never have happened if sites were fast to begin with. Like I always say about AMP, there are two parts to it: some sort…

> Most of the times, the AMP site is faster Except AMP sites usually aren't faster. They just get preloaded[0]. If google preloaded non-AMP sites (which is technically feasible, there has been browser extensions doing this since ages ago), they too would load "faster", fancy that! There's no good part to AMP. It's bullshit that doesn't really work. Sure in absolute metrics, your website might be "faster" simply by fo…

> Except AMP sites usually aren't faster. They just get preloaded[0]. If google preloaded non-AMP sites (which is technically feasible, there has been browser extensions doing this since ages ago), they too would load "faster", fancy that!

This is not feasible in a security conscious way. Preloading leaks metadata (at a minimum things like IP address, and probably much more for a useful implementation) to third party hosts without any user interaction.

Even without preloading, as I understand it, amp is still faster than your "average" site since it enforces decent performance hygiene. Yes, performance conscious owners can create slightly faster sites, but most don't. The 0.0s load times for preloaded sites and potential to cache is just butter for an end user.

[I work at Google but have nothing to do with AMP].

Re: Lawmakers Want to Protect Local Newspapers From Google, Facebook

#53

Post by joshuamorton » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 5:31 PM UTC

specialist wrote: post #46

It's super weird that news aggregators aren't directly funding OC. How does "news" work when most of the content creators go out of business? (Edit: Huh. I guess we already know, because that's exactly what happened.) Compare news to other OC, like books, music, video, podcasts, and apps. Musicians get paid. Kinda. (I'm not smart enough to figure out if Apple/Beats is some kind of label, meaning underwriting (?) OC.)…

> Video definitely gets paid. Streaming, snippets (Vine and now TikTok style), vlogging, sports, episodic TV, movies, miniseries (Netflix), etc. EVERYONE is paying for OC video. It's a strategic differentiator.

Most don't. You need to have a nontrivial following on youtube to make any money, and a relatively significant one to make nontrivial amounts of money. Unless you get millions of views per day (YT, or tens of millions on tiktok), your only path to good income is external brand deals.

You can look into the tiktok creator fund controversies recently for this. Tiktok created a "community fund" that paid creators. Creators who joined found that their viewership dropped when they joined the fund, and they made less money than expected. Most mid sized creators left, and the going theory is that the largest tik tok'ers (your Damelios and Derulos) make the majority of their income from special deals that aren't available to the average creator.

All of which is to say that funding for high quality content directly through the platform is usually not sustainable (see also: music streaming platforms paying pittances), so high quality OC is funded via specialized deals or other processes, like subscriptions or external advertising deals. So journalists are way ahead of the game there.

Re: Lawmakers Want to Protect Local Newspapers From Google, Facebook

#54

Post by jdeibele » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 6:25 PM UTC

curryst wrote: post #49

This won't save them, the local newspaper is doomed. Local papers have always functioned as a sort of news aggregator. They aggregate local news together with national news and serve you that as a sort of localized feed of information. It's similar to Reddit; the NYT and national news are like /r/worldnews (purely in topic, not content) and local papers are like your city's subreddit. Letters to the Editor are like c…

To chime in: The local newspaper went from being delivered 7 days a week as a folded newspaper to being delivered 4 days a week in a tabloid form that's about 60% the size of the old format.

We cancelled then, and probably a lot of other people did, too.

We recently subscribed for 1 year as a gesture to "save our local newspaper". As part of that, we get the Sunday paper for free. Our last one is still in the plastic wrapper just inside the door. 4 days after we got it, none of us (2 parents, 2 high school students, 1 college student) have bothered to open it.

Our local paper is part of the Advance chain. Their website is terrible and it doesn't seem to be updated very often. Probably they have some sort of PDF format that is hard to use or even worse a custom app that basically acts as a magnifying glass on a small section of the page.

What I want from a local paper: local stuff. I don't care about their opinion on national issues and The NY Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, etc. are just a click away.

In another universe, newspapers could have capitalized on the fact that they had by making free online ads, discussion forums, etc. Yes, there'd be some moderation issues but it's a lot easier if you've got paying customers. Don't want to subscribe? Can't comment. Can't post an ad. Maybe can't respond to an ad.

They pissed that all away by making their content free. Now their content is basically worthless and there's nowhere for them to go.

Re: Lawmakers Want to Protect Local Newspapers From Google, Facebook

#55

Post by aitchnyu » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 8:40 PM UTC

Google234 wrote: post #24

mhh__ wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They must have calculated they can't survive at their current ad impression rates, hence the forcing people onto their app at literally any cost these days. It wouldn't be as much of a problem if the app actually worked well, but it doesn't

Are there more ads on the app?

With autoplaying video with sound, I have to unpause my music after an ad. On the plus side, one brand (AFAICT) enabled comment section on their ad.

Re: Lawmakers Want to Protect Local Newspapers From Google, Facebook

#56

Post by musicale » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 2:34 AM UTC

curryst wrote: post #49

This won't save them, the local newspaper is doomed. Local papers have always functioned as a sort of news aggregator. They aggregate local news together with national news and serve you that as a sort of localized feed of information. It's similar to Reddit; the NYT and national news are like /r/worldnews (purely in topic, not content) and local papers are like your city's subreddit. Letters to the Editor are like c…

Truly local newspapers, which cover local news and run ads from local businesses, don't seem to be doomed.

One of the biggest hits that newspapers have taken is not from the likes of google or facebook but rather craigslist/ebay/etc. which replaced classified ads.

Re: Lawmakers Want to Protect Local Newspapers From Google, Facebook

#57

Post by musicale » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 2:39 AM UTC

gravypod wrote: post #17

ffpip wrote: post #3

Google gives special preference to AMP sites in search, images and google news. Google is also removing non-AMP URLs from Google News. fucking everything is loaded from their servers nowadays

Amp, for whatever you might feel about it, is the best content loading experience for people with poor internet. Launch up an AVD and set it to use a 3g roaming profile and try and load up NY Times AMP and non-AMP. I'm not a fan of the implementation personally but something like this needs to exist for developing markets. I didn't know how bad this was until I started working with someone in Brazil and saw he has 2M…

> use a 3g roaming profile and try and load up NY Times AMP and non-AMP

2Mbps internet should be more than adequate for loading an article's text and an accompanying image via basic HTML.

Unfortunately....the first thing that slows sites down is loading 6 MB of garbage (junk from dozens of domains, ad networks, tracking, "analytics", who knows what else?) to view a few paragraphs of text and a single image.

Then there are the sites with usually unrelated, irritating auto-playing videos that basically nobody wants but you can't turn off even if you've "disabled" autoplay in the browser...

Why did we decide to adopt these worst practices? Maybe we decided at some point that the commercial web was a bad idea and should be made as unusable as possible to discourage its use.

Re: Lawmakers Want to Protect Local Newspapers From Google, Facebook

#58

Post by specialist » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 4:03 PM UTC

joshuamorton wrote: post #53

specialist wrote: post #46

It's super weird that news aggregators aren't directly funding OC. How does "news" work when most of the content creators go out of business? (Edit: Huh. I guess we already know, because that's exactly what happened.) Compare news to other OC, like books, music, video, podcasts, and apps. Musicians get paid. Kinda. (I'm not smart enough to figure out if Apple/Beats is some kind of label, meaning underwriting (?) OC.)…

> Video definitely gets paid. Streaming, snippets (Vine and now TikTok style), vlogging, sports, episodic TV, movies, miniseries (Netflix), etc. EVERYONE is paying for OC video. It's a strategic differentiator. Most don't. You need to have a nontrivial following on youtube to make any money, and a relatively significant one to make nontrivial amounts of money. Unless you get millions of views per day (YT, or tens of…

Will read about TikTok's community fund. Thank you.

I assumed that there's at least some OC on TikTok (and others?) getting paid. Those successful influencers I keep reading about.

What's the long term plan for these "platforms" like TikTok, DoorDash, Uber, etc if the laborers don't get paid? I simply don't know.

It does seem the "sharing economy" grift is evergreen. IRL, MLMs and other grifts seem to wax and wane, but never really go away.

Re: Lawmakers Want to Protect Local Newspapers From Google, Facebook

#59

Post by cutemonster » Fri, Oct 30, 2020, 2:08 PM UTC

jdeibele wrote: post #54

curryst wrote: post #49

This won't save them, the local newspaper is doomed. Local papers have always functioned as a sort of news aggregator. They aggregate local news together with national news and serve you that as a sort of localized feed of information. It's similar to Reddit; the NYT and national news are like /r/worldnews (purely in topic, not content) and local papers are like your city's subreddit. Letters to the Editor are like c…

To chime in: The local newspaper went from being delivered 7 days a week as a folded newspaper to being delivered 4 days a week in a tabloid form that's about 60% the size of the old format. We cancelled then, and probably a lot of other people did, too. We recently subscribed for 1 year as a gesture to "save our local newspaper". As part of that, we get the Sunday paper for free. Our last one is still in the plastic…

> They pissed that all away by making their content free

Sounds as if you're saying they should have added paywalls? (Sooner than want most maybe did?)

But at the same time, you mention ads?