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Goodbye, Denver Post. Hello, Blockchain

nytimes.com

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Re: Goodbye, Denver Post. Hello, Blockchain

#71

Post by hueving »

pudo wrote: post #33
ilikehurdles wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, I would call very few people at the Murdoch’s and Mercer’s media conglomerates and the like journalists, and while they’ve significantly amplified extremism in the last two years, they’ve never been considered legitimate journalistic organizations like the New Yorker or the Washington Post.

WSJ is a pretty renowned newspaper. Coincidentally, they published the Theranos investigation which probably cost Murdoch $100mn. I'm somewhat entertained by the posters in this thread shitting on media organisations. You need to understand: the business model for a whole pillar of democracy is gone. $5 and your sarcastic comment will buy you a cafe latte, but the very last thing journalism needs more of is disruptio…

>So if you're sitting in a really nicely paid high-tech job somewhere in SV, realise that you are the origin of this problem. A problem that causes damage to democracy in numerous countries. Maybe a little less arrogance?

Tech companies aren't responsible for the decline in quality of journalism. They are responsible for shining light on how bloated and bad they were all along.

Checking facts and multiple sources on news stories was a major undertaking before the internet. Media has always been biased and bad, it's just that the internet is shedding light on how bad it is.

Transparency and widely available information is the pillar of democracy, not news organizations.

Re: Goodbye, Denver Post. Hello, Blockchain

#72

Post by PhasmaFelis »

hueving wrote: post #71
pudo wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WSJ is a pretty renowned newspaper. Coincidentally, they published the Theranos investigation which probably cost Murdoch $100mn. I'm somewhat entertained by the posters in this thread shitting on media organisations. You need to understand: the business model for a whole pillar of democracy is gone. $5 and your sarcastic comment will buy you a cafe latte, but the very last thing journalism needs more of is disruptio…

>So if you're sitting in a really nicely paid high-tech job somewhere in SV, realise that you are the origin of this problem. A problem that causes damage to democracy in numerous countries. Maybe a little less arrogance? Tech companies aren't responsible for the decline in quality of journalism. They are responsible for shining light on how bloated and bad they were all along. Checking facts and multiple sources on…

Are you arguing that New York Times and Washington Post of 20 years ago were secretly just as vapid and outrage-focused as the stars of modern clickbait media?

Re: Goodbye, Denver Post. Hello, Blockchain

#74

Post by geofft »

prolikewhoa wrote: post #62
geofft wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's obvious when the Washington Post writes articles about Amazon that there's a conflict of interest. They definitely write them, but I don't remember anyone sharing any stories from them about e.g. the HQ2 process. People know to look elsewhere. And conversely, the moment the Post publishes a news (not opinion) article about how every city should want to be HQ2, or worse, mentions it off-hand in an article about s…

How many people are actually informed that the Washington Post is owned by Jeff Bezos? How many people know that Jeff Bezos has contracts with the CIA[1] & sits on a pentagon board[2]? I doubt many. It's one of the few "left" wing newspapers I refuse to read for the reasons above. I'm not arguing for this blockchain solution, I think it makes things worse exactly as you said. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/technolog…

Given that the President of the United States went on a yelling spree recently about Bezos' ownership, I'd say most people who can distinguish the Washington Post from the Washington Times (owned by Sun Myung Moon's religion and absurdly right-wing) also know who owns the Post.

(Which isn't to say everyone knows that either—a lot of people seem to take the Times equally seriously—but solving the problem of bad-faith media existing is another one entirely, and quite probably the answer is it shouldn't be solved at all.)

Re: Goodbye, Denver Post. Hello, Blockchain

#75

Post by codebje »

Lazare wrote: post #56

> They will be partnering with the Civil Media Company, an ambitious New York start-up that aims to use griddles and pancake recipes to start 1,000 publications nationwide by the end of the year. ...actually I think the original quote said something about crypto, not pancakes, but I don't think it changes the underlying meaning. Why do you need a distributed, trustless database to run a local paper? > The new publica…

> Matthew Iles, the chief executive of Civil, said that by selling crypto tokens masquerading as ownership stakes they could raise a large amount of capital without setting any expectation of returns.

It's just another coin capital scam. Launch a crypto coin, get suckers to buy it, go yacht shopping.

Re: Goodbye, Denver Post. Hello, Blockchain

#76

Post by tomcam »

ilikehurdles wrote: post #32
cloakandswagger wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Journalists don't seem to need any help in damaging their reputation and the public's trust in them. These alternative distribution schemes seem to be a response to the bias and selective reporting done over the last two years.

Eh, I would call very few people at the Murdoch’s and Mercer’s media conglomerates and the like journalists, and while they’ve significantly amplified extremism in the last two years, they’ve never been considered legitimate journalistic organizations like the New Yorker or the Washington Post.

The Wall Street Journal has significantly amplified extremism in the last two years? It is not considered a legitimate journalistic organization? Please give examples.

Re: Goodbye, Denver Post. Hello, Blockchain

#77

Post by okay_nick »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #4

> People who purchase the CVL token, a form of cryptocurrency, will have a say concerning the projects hosted by Civil — meaning that they can vote on whether one of its websites violates the company’s journalism standards, which are outlined in the Civil Constitution This features the worst elements of public ( e.g. the BBC ), private ( e.g. the Wall Street Journal ) and patronage ( e.g. the Washington Post ) media.…

Hello! I'm an engineer at Civil, happy to discuss some of your concerns.

The CVL token is used to vote on whether or not the community believes a newsroom follows well understood journalistic standards (more information about these standards can be found in our "constitution" - https://blog.joincivil.com/the-civil-constitution-beta-64460...).

We use a system known as a Token Curated Registry (https://medium.com/@ilovebagels/token-curated-registries-1-0...) that incentivizes people to vote judiciously according to a shared understanding of values and not simply according to their own political leanings. TCRs also have built in mechanisms that reduce the ability of wealthy individuals/parties to unilaterally attack the integrity of the registry, as well as mechanisms to recover from such attacks if they do occur. We've further refined this idea by creating an independent non-profit body known as the Civil Council made up of well respected journalists and academics that can step in in situations where a vote was clearly motivated by political bias and not made in good faith.

We are also working very hard to ensure that our tokens are distributed to parties that are going to use them in good faith. We'll have more to announce on that front soon!

Being "whitelisted" or not on our TCR does not determine whether or not a newsroom is able to publish. Newsrooms are independent and have full editorial control of their content. Being on the TCR is a (we hope valuable) credibility indicator for newsrooms. The idea is that when you see an article by a newsroom that is on the TCR, you'll know that they have been vetted by the community and are very likely a trustworthy source.

TCRs are a new and experimental system, and we don't claim that our first implementation will be flawless and fix all the issues in the news media landscape. But we will iterate and improve it and firmly believe that some form of TCR can be used to help people understand their news sources better, increasing media literacy and trust, in a way that can scale worldwide.

-- Nick Reynolds

Re: Goodbye, Denver Post. Hello, Blockchain

#78

Post by [deleted] »

TangoTrotFox wrote: post #31
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> who exactly do you think owns the current media companies in the US? Point being we can answer this question. If you put ownership on the blockchain, we can’t. It’s exactly what we have today, but worse.

This is shifting the goal posts. The point is we have a media that's already well under the thumb of 'rich people', to use the phrase of the person I originally responded to. And so comparing any idea to an ideal of an independent media free of this control is rather disingenuous. For your shift, is anonymizing control in exchange for a clear ledger of control a bad deal? I'm not sure. Seems like an interesting idea…

[deleted]

Re: Goodbye, Denver Post. Hello, Blockchain

#79

Post by jacobn »

cabaalis wrote: post #46

I often click a bunch of links on here and receive a "Sorry, you've exceeded the free limit" message. Why can't I dump $5 into an account on NYT and then be able to click "I want to read this, use my tab." I'm not talking about a subscription. I'm talking about a "buy 10 reads" which I would absolutely use. I will not subscribe.

Having run a business (in an unrelated field) that offered both a subscription and a paygo model, the reason was pretty clear: you lose more from people who would have subscribed opting for paygo than you gain from people who would never subscribe but would choose paygo.

The subscriptions are surprisingly valuable. Paygo not so much.

Usual caveats apply: on average, in my experience, YMMV, etc etc.

Re: Goodbye, Denver Post. Hello, Blockchain

#80

Post by lgregg »

okay_nick wrote: post #77
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #4

> People who purchase the CVL token, a form of cryptocurrency, will have a say concerning the projects hosted by Civil — meaning that they can vote on whether one of its websites violates the company’s journalism standards, which are outlined in the Civil Constitution This features the worst elements of public ( e.g. the BBC ), private ( e.g. the Wall Street Journal ) and patronage ( e.g. the Washington Post ) media.…

Hello! I'm an engineer at Civil, happy to discuss some of your concerns. The CVL token is used to vote on whether or not the community believes a newsroom follows well understood journalistic standards (more information about these standards can be found in our "constitution" - https://blog.joincivil.com/the-civil-constitution-beta-64460... ). We use a system known as a Token Curated Registry ( https://medium.com/@il…

> TCRs also have built in mechanisms that reduce the ability of wealthy individuals/parties to unilaterally attack the integrity of the registry, as well as mechanisms to recover from such attacks if they do occur.

Can you give any examples you can share? You have state/non-state actors which have mass resources to use to their advantage directly or indirectly (e.g. troll farms). What prevents people from buying these CVL tokens and/or creating multiple accounts to bias your ledger? It's not like they really are taking a hit on these transactions unless they're above $5-$10. The Internet Research Agency had a small budget compared to other actors which were in the millions.

It also could go the other way for voting against reputable journalism. Is there prevention in this area as well? It seems like the Vote Quorum could be abused in this area.

It seems like it might be much easier to challenge your system around voting with an algorithm rather than the social engineering that occurs on social platforms.

Though I might come off critical, I'm excited to see how this turns out. I'm pretty new to blockchain and don't understand it all. Though, I did see the "Attacks against token-curated registries and mitigations" in your whitepaper. How expensive are these coins?

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