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Vice website is shutting down

writing.exchange

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Re: Vice website is shutting down

#91

Post by irrational »

nextaccountic wrote: post #21

It makes no sense to not let the site online in an archived form, for the posterity It wouldn't even be a significant cost and ads would recoup it anyway There should be a way to donate a website to the Internet Archive so that they run an online archive on it, basically keeping the site frozen forever (rather than relying on the Wayback Machine which has worse UX)

Business people, who make these decisions, aren’t exactly known for being intelligent or asking intelligent questions of technical people who work for them.

Re: Vice website is shutting down

#92

Post by transcriptase »

1letterunixname wrote: post #30

Once they got funding and on HBO they rested on their behinds, spent too much money, wasted effort on bullshit while neglecting hard journalism, and believed they "arrived." Paper billionaires checked out, some sold out, and their value slowly went to zero because the owners failed to insist on leadership and culture continuity. Sad af and a total waste. Never get complacent.

When you go from:

“our employee spent 3 weeks alone filming inside the islamic state”

to

“what’s up with taylor swift fans and cowboy hats?”

… it might be time to jump ship before the layoffs.

Re: Vice website is shutting down

#93

Post by manderley »

dmix wrote: post #89
manderley wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those ad dollars will diminish quickly, and pretty soon it will be more expensive to keep the website up than to just take it down.

It's not that expensive to host old blog posts and they already host videos on YouTube... What's expensive in those operations is supporting new content and growth. Now they can wind it down and establish a fixed legacy system and eventually run it on autopilot with a small team in support roles.

And they'll keep updating contracts to sell ads for a defunct site? Seems doubtful. Past experience shows that the site is unlikely to stay up for the long haul.

Re: Vice website is shutting down

#94

Post by 15457345234 »

dmix wrote: post #89
manderley wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those ad dollars will diminish quickly, and pretty soon it will be more expensive to keep the website up than to just take it down.

It's not that expensive to host old blog posts and they already host videos on YouTube... What's expensive in those operations is supporting new content and growth. Now they can wind it down and establish a fixed legacy system and eventually run it on autopilot with a small team in support roles.

People just try and hack it constantly - as in, hundreds of automated hacking attempts per day, and when they succeed, they won't make obvious changes, they'll tweak things gently in a malignant way that won't be noticed for some time.

Re: Vice website is shutting down

#95

Post by doctor_eval »

resolutebat wrote: post #78
paxys wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

18M YouTube subscribers can sustain a decent business, sure, but not one with 3000+ employees.

What? Why on earth does Vice have 3000 employees? I thought publishing companies long since switched to having all their content creators freelance. Edit: I thought OP was exaggerating, but nope, per this random website they have/had at least 2,300. https://rocketreach.co/vice-media-profile_b5c6f6cef42e0cd9

That alone explains what’s happening.

Re: Vice website is shutting down

#96

Post by devmor »

manderley wrote: post #87
dmix wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing in that post indicates they are taking it offline, the HN headline is just editorializing. It says Vice is no longer making new content for their Web properties and focusing on other platforms instead like YouTube. There's no way they'd give up the ads dollars they get from he existing stuff... That makes no sense

Those ad dollars will diminish quickly, and pretty soon it will be more expensive to keep the website up than to just take it down.

I don't think you have any contextual knowledge of how cheap it is to serve static content.

Re: Vice website is shutting down

#97

Post by dmix »

15457345234 wrote: post #94
dmix wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that expensive to host old blog posts and they already host videos on YouTube... What's expensive in those operations is supporting new content and growth. Now they can wind it down and establish a fixed legacy system and eventually run it on autopilot with a small team in support roles.

People just try and hack it constantly - as in, hundreds of automated hacking attempts per day, and when they succeed, they won't make obvious changes, they'll tweak things gently in a malignant way that won't be noticed for some time.

It's really not that complicated to manage cloudflare type Web app firewalls and shutdown content interfaces, both comment sections and admin panels, so there's no malleable auth areas to breach. And even if that happens a small team could easily handle run of the mill script kiddies and SEO schemes.

Re: Vice website is shutting down

#98

Post by joegahona »

nextaccountic wrote: post #21

It makes no sense to not let the site online in an archived form, for the posterity It wouldn't even be a significant cost and ads would recoup it anyway There should be a way to donate a website to the Internet Archive so that they run an online archive on it, basically keeping the site frozen forever (rather than relying on the Wayback Machine which has worse UX)

Original photography sometimes has tricky licensing — photos are good for only 5 years, then have to be renewed. That’s what photo editors at these magazines do. The text content itself is usually a one-and-done deal though.
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