Killing Website Comment Sections Wasn't The Brilliant Move Many Newsroom Leaders Assumed

from the muzzles-aren't-innovation dept

So for years we pointed out how the trend of news websites killing off their comment section (usually because they were too cheap or lazy to creatively manage them) was counterproductive. One, it killed off a lot of local, community value and engagement created within your own properties. Two, it outsourced anything vaguely resembling functional conversation with your community -- and a lot of additional impressions and engagement -- to Facebook. Despite the downsides everybody ran with the idea that comment sections were utterly irredeemable and unnecessary.

Turns out, much of the conventional wisdom driving those decisions wasn't so grounded in fact. This Poynter piece does a really good job revisiting whether killing the comment section was a good idea ten years on. It's true that negative comments in the comment section can tarnish a visitor's perception of the quality of an outlet's brand. But it's also true that the discussions outsourced to Facebook continue to also do that, they're just doing that over at Facebook. So many researchers argue that if you're going to have a discussion, you're probably better off having at locally at your site:

"Conversations on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram won’t stop. And the same research premise holds true — negative comments on those platforms will have a negative impact on the outlet’s credibility. So is it better to at least keep one forum where the outlet has control and the potential to monetize commenters into subscribers? And how do we make that forum as good as it can possibly be?"

If you recall, when most news empires over the last decade announced they were killing their comment sections, it was usually accompanied with some form of gibberish about how the decision was made because they just really "valued conversation" or wanted to "build better relationships." Sometimes newsroom managers would be slightly more candid in acknowledging they just didn't give enough of a shit to try very hard, in part because they felt news comments were just wild, untamable beasts, outside of the laws of physics and man, and irredeemable at best.

But again, as it turns out, none of that was true.

One recent experiment worked collaboratively with 24 Gannett newsrooms giving them four options: to turn off comments, to keep existing commenting systems in place, to use Vox Media’s "Coral" commenting system, but to use Coral’s commenting system and only allow subscribers to comment. You'll never guess what the study found:

"Turning off comments actually lowered the average time readers spent on the site, according to Stroud’s research.

And journalists, who have the most to lose from a harsh comment, didn’t have increased job satisfaction or feel differently about how the newsroom served the community when comments were eliminated."

While yes, many readers are often incoherent trolls, many other readers actually (gasp!) know what they're talking about, and their input and conversations can actually improve journalism. As is often evident here at Techdirt, sometimes the resulting conversation can correct something the author has gotten wrong, or give reporters insights into trends and ideas they'd never previously even considered. If modern news is actually a conversation, quality comments are a helpful extension of that conversation:

The Detroit Free Press’ Delgado sees involving reporters more routinely in the process as a potential solution. Having the journalist in the space with commenters can create a conversation between the newsroom and the community. It’s beneficial not just to readers, but to the reporters themselves.

“I know when I moderate comments, I’m a smarter, better journalist,” Delgado said. “I know what people are talking about, and you can start to see a lot of the ideas and theories that are resonating."

The problem wasn't so much the comment section, it was poor managers running news organizations in a country that doesn't properly fund journalism. And the study above does show that if you're not going to run a comment section well, you're better off not trying. But at the same time, a lot of these organizations did have the resources to do a better job at managing on-site community, it was just easier and cheaper to pretend comment sections were some irredeemable, malicious force we were all better off without to justify their corner cutting. That was always a narrow oversimplification.

The untapped irony is that many of these same major outlets that outsourced all discourse to Facebook over the last five to ten years, now complain incessantly about how Facebook has too much power over discourse, ad markets, and everything else. It's pretty rare you'll see anybody acknowledge that the decision to muzzle local communities and outsource all discourse to Facebook helped create at least some of the problems they're now complaining about.

Filed Under: comments, community, journalism, news

A Quick Bite Post Mortem For For Quibi: Hollywood Still Doesn't Get The Internet

from the it-ain't-about-the-content dept

So Quibi, the Hollywood dream of creating a new "professional" video streaming service by throwing $1.75 billion at Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman and hoping they could create something, lasted all of 199 days before announcing that it was throwing in the towel (even though it apparently still has a chunk of that cash on hand, which it will be handing back to some investors). As we noted when it launched, Quibi is the perfect example of Hollywood thinking about the internet. It overvalued the content (and believed that you got the best content by throwing money at big names), and completely undervalued the internet and the fact that the killer application of the internet is community and communication.

For decades now, we've pointed out time and time again that Hollywood seems to view the internet through the lens of their existing industry -- one built up with a few giant gatekeepers who "greenlight" what content gets made -- and that the content they pick must be financed with ungodly sums of money. I'm reminded of the former NBC exec who quizzed me years ago about how to make sure his company could keep making $200 million movies. As I've noted repeatedly in the 15 years since I was challenged over that, the whole question is wrong. No one in the tech industry demands that others explain "how do we keep making $5,000 computers." The industry looks at how best to serve customers -- and often looks for creative ways to do it cheaper and more efficiently, rather than just setting a cost and tossing cash into it.

Quibi was the result of this kind of hubris: taking the Hollywood approach to an internet world. And it showed.

As James Surowiecki highlights in his own post-mortem, Quibi is basically the opposite of what a compelling internet service is because it relies on the idea of the brilliant visionary anointing the best content, rather than letting it bubble up via the wisdom of the crowds.

I find it notable that Quibi shut down the week that there was a flood of stories (and TV commercials) featuring Nathan Apodaca, the Idaho potato farmer who's random TikTok video of himself on a skateboarding heading into work (after his truck broke down) while drinking cranberry juice from a giant bottle and singling along to Fleetwood Mac went super viral. It was also a "quick bite" video, but it was basically the anti-Quibi. That one random video going viral has even brought Fleetwood Mac's "Dreams" back onto the charts 43 years after the song came out.

That's the power of the internet. It allows anyone to create. It allows anyone to share. And out of all of that, it allows some amazing content to bubble up, because tons of people like it -- and not because some super rich Hollywood dude decides "this is what the people want."

Filed Under: broadcast, communication, community, content, hollywood, internet, jeffrey katzenberg, meg whitman, sharing, value
Companies: quibi

Quibi Is What Happens When Hollywood Overvalues Content And Undervalues Community

from the how-are-you-doing-fellow-kids dept

As you may have heard (and may still being bombarded by ads for) recently, a new video streaming service called Quibi launched to much fanfare. The fanfare was not around the technology or the content, mind you, but around the fact that there were some famous people involved (namely: former Disney/Dreamworks exec Jeffrey Katzenberg and, to a lesser extent, former eBay/HP CEO Meg Whitman -- who had been a Disney and Dreamworks exec earlier) and the ridiculous fact that the company raised nearly $2 billion before it even had launched. There was some buzz about it leading up to launch... but mostly from the media which always falls for the story of the company that raises a ton of money and has some famous person in charge.

So far, however, Quibi appears to be yet another example of a point I made about Hollywood and the internet over a decade ago: entertainment execs have a long history of overvaluing the content and undervaluing users and what they want. Sometimes I've described this as overvaluing content and undervaluing technology (which plays into the whole Hollywood/Silicon Valley divide), but it's actually something different than that, which is ably shown by the complete dumpster fire that Quibi has been so far. They spent silly amounts of money on content, and then seemed to focus the "technology" money on a completely pointless and weird setup where the orientation of your devices changes what you see (that is, if you hold your phone in portrait orientation, what you see is not just a scrunched up landscape mode, but something different). That seems like the kind of thing that a bunch of out-of-touch execs would sit around and brainstorm without any understanding whatsoever of how real people use devices. At best it seems like an attempt to try again with Verizon's brain-dead Go90 service that no one ever used.

And, so far Quibi's living down to expectations. Within a week of its launch, things were not looking good:

After a quick moment in the spotlight, Quibi has tanked in the US iPhone app rankings.

The streaming app had a strong debut last week as the fourth most downloaded iPhone app, but quickly fell in the rankings. Yesterday, it dropped out of the top 50, and today it's the 71st most popular app in the US, according to data from analytics firm App Annie.

Quibi is now less popular than Netflix, Hulu, Disney Plus, and Amazon Prime Video among US iPhone users. It's also ranked below an ASMR Slicing app, the Calm meditation app, and the Roku app that functions as a TV remote.

Ouch.

And it's never a good sign when your head of marketing quits two weeks after launch... in the midst of a global pandemic.

Hell, even the content -- which, again, was supposed to be central to Quibi's strategy, and which they threw a ton of money at -- isn't wowing anyone:

The app itself functions as promised. The shows, though, are a mess. Quibi shows all share a few qualities: They’re short, with episode run times under ten minutes. Short doesn’t have to mean chintzy or trivial, but Quibi shows almost universally feel cheaper and less memorable than similar stuff on other platforms. The Quibi shows that are meant to seem like TV shows do feel like TV shows (Run This Town, Shape of Pasta, Murder House Flip), but their compressed run times and thoughtless cinematography just remind you of how much better they could be if they were TV shows. Camera angles and scene edits look identical to the visual design of a typical TV show, full of panning cameras and long shots, and it’s seemingly meant to signal that “this is a serious, expensive TV show!” Instead, it signals that no one’s put much effort into thinking about what this should look like when played in a vertical format on a phone. The Quibi shows that seem closest to YouTube series (Dishmantled, Gayme Show, Memory Hole) fare better, but even those feel half-hearted, all shell and no inner oomph. The worst are the movies, like When the Streetlights Go On or Most Dangerous Game, which Quibi advertises as “movies in chapters.” In their widescreen cinematography, the beats of each scene, the way they’ve been awkwardly crammed into tiny chunks, I swear you can still hear them screaming, “I’m a movie!” even as Quibi shovels dirt over their short-form-mobile-storytelling graves.

Meanwhile, almost everything that Quibi has done suggests that they really don't understand how to build a modern internet service, which starts and ends with building up a supportive community. Instead, Quibi seems to have taken some of their way-too-large-bank-account and focused on pissing off the few people who like what they do. First, they added some dumb DRM to stop people from taking screenshots (one of a few ways that content goes viral these days):

Quibi was designed from the ground up to be a mobile experience. A big part of what people do with their phones is share. They share photos from their lives on TikTok, information with strangers on Twitter, and swap memes with people on Facebook. Quibi wants to be part of that mobile universe. But by disabling the ability to let people share what they’re seeing, it has shut down a core experience that comes with being on our phones. For a self-proclaimed game-changing mobile experience, it isn’t very mobile-friendly.

Indeed, the inability to create any kind of meme-ification of Quibi content seems to be a recognition by Quibi execs that their content just isn't very good. As Kathryn VanArendonk wrote at Vulture: Let Me Screenshot Your Quibi Show, Cowards:

Screenshots, memes, GIFs, and other small excerpts are essentially forms of quotation. They act as shareable pieces of larger works, sometimes with the goal of illuminating the work they come from, but often getting cut away from their original contexts, sent out into the world to stand on their own and gather their own meanings. GIFs are the most common out-of-context excerpts of longer video works, so expressive and self-sufficient that they can communicate an idea without carrying along any of their original framework. Screenshots can function the same way, often speaking more toward the context in which they’re being deployed than referencing the original work. They become their own form of language, but as they circulate and accrete new meanings, they also make the images, reactions, stories, and personalities from the original work more familiar, more of a bedrock part of cultural discourse. Carole Baskin’s “Hey all you cool cats and kittens!” line quickly became a reference to Tiger King, for instance, but it’s also accrued its own implications separate from the show — it’s a weird greeting, an awkwardly mannered way to start speaking, a intro with just a touch of self-awareness and also not nearly enough social awareness.

And then... apparently Quibi has money to spare on lawyers, rather than people who actually understand the internet, because they actually sent a cease-and-desist letter to what might be the only podcast that likes Quibi:

Rob Dezendorf and Danielle Gibson started a show formerly called Quibiverse, a fan space to discuss the various “quick bite” content offered by the new streamer. However, the creators say that after 17 episodes, they were sent a cease-and-desist. Per Dezendoorf: “They were like, ‘Well, you can’t use the name Quibi, you can’t tell anyone that you’re about Quibi, you can talk about Quibi, but no one can know through your title and you can’t have any artwork that resembles our stuff.’” Gibson added: “It just felt so surreal to get a cease-and-desist from a billion-dollar company, about our fan podcast, in the midst of a global health crisis.”

In the end, Quibi looks like it may be heading in the same direction as other such ideas that throw a lot of money at streaming content without actually understanding what makes an internet service work (such as a community of fans). As Paul Tassi at Forbes recently wrote, Quibi seems destined to be the service that everyone's heard of and no one uses:

And yet, since Quibi’s launch during the pandemic lockdown, I have had zero, actual organic conversation about the service with…anyone.

None of my real-life friends have even heard of it, unless they’ve been mildly annoyed by the ads like I’ve been, but none are watching. The only people on my social media channels that have seen any Quibi shows are entertainment journalists where it’s quite literally their job to watch and report back what they find.

It's sad how frequently this sort of thing happens, and it would be better if Hollywood didn't always rush into things assuming it knows best (especially about technology) and assuming that all you need to do is throw a lot of money at content to make an internet service.

Filed Under: community, content, hollywood, jeffrey katzenberg, meg whitman, overvalue, streaming video, technology, value
Companies: quibi

Killing News Comments Only Solidified Google, Facebook Dominance

from the ya-played-yourself dept

We've talked a lot about how the trend du jour in online media circles is to ditch the news comment section, then condescendingly pretend this is because the website just really values user relationships. ReCode, NPR, Reuters, Bloomberg, Popular Science and more have all proclaimed that they just love their on-site communities so much, they'll no longer allow them to speak. Of course what these sites often can't admit is that they were too lazy or cheap to cultivate their communities, can't seem to monetize quality discourse, and don't really like people pointing out story errors in such a conspicuous location.

Many of these same editors and outlets will (justly) complain how Google and Facebook have hoovered up online ad revenue to the point where operating an independent media outlet is a financial minefield. Only occasionally will you see somebody realize that the process of outsourcing all on-site discourse to social media by killing news comments contributed to the overall problem. Sure, outsourcing the hassles of moderation may have saved you a little time and money, but driving the on-site community away from your website to giant social media platforms contributed to the very dominance you're now railing against.

That's something Simon Owens recently did a good job of pointing out in a piece about how killing on-site news comments is a "colossal mistake" that has directly contributed to the social media domination many editors now lament:

Did comments sections invite trollish behavior? Yes. Did moderating that behavior require both editorial and technical resources? Also yes. But deploying these resources was worth the cost, as it would have resulted in publishers maintaining a stronger relationship with their readerships. Instead, much of the news media became commoditized, with news outlets placing more emphasis on drive-by Facebook traffic than serving loyal readers. In pursuing this strategy, publishers placed more distance between themselves and their users, and so they were ill-equipped when digital advertising models collapsed and platforms like Facebook siphoned off their traffic.

While you'd be hard-pressed to find many editors admit it, much of the assault on ye olde news comments was driven by a desire to return to the bygone era of "letters to the editor," when outlets were able to carefully curate reader response and mute particularly pointed criticism. But if these editors cared even an iota as much about "conversation" and "community" as they claimed, they'd realize that deleting your on-site communities sends a very clear message to these users that they really don't actually matter. At least not outside obvious, easily-documented advertising metrics.

While many of these same editors were quick to claim that low comment engagement made the hassles of moderation not worth it, Owens does a good job deconstructing that claim and pointing out the benefits of a small but loyal cadre of on-site fans:

Let’s be clear: even the publishers with the best comment moderation still only see a small percentage of their readers convert into on-site commenters. But let’s say only 5 percent of your readers choose to register and comment; those readers will punch far above their weight in terms of driving traffic and revenue to your site. Those are your chief evangelists, your repeat customers, your paying subscribers.

To understand how a small percentage of a publisher’s most loyal users can drive revenue growth, consider The New York Times. Currently, its digital subscribers only account for 3.6 percent of the newspaper’s monthly online audience, and yet that 3.6 percent drove over $400 million in subscription revenue in 2018. When you’re dealing with the scale of the internet, catering to your most engaged readers is worth the investment.

Unfortunately this was a lesson lost by many outlets as they shoveled their on-site fans into the maws of social media giants, only to turn around shortly thereafter to complain about Google and Facebook's insurmountable domination.

Filed Under: comments, community, competition, dominance, internet, journalism, social media
Companies: facebook, google

The Subtle Economics Of Private World Of Warcraft Servers: Anarchy, Order And Who Gets The Loot

from the economics-and-gaming dept

"I got a recording. I got a recording of this idiot." A Scandinavian-accented voice declares over voice chat. "Can someone tell the people from [the other player's guild] what he just did?"

That was the subject of a Reddit post giving a "daily reminder that Sharphealz is a ninja." Instead of shuriken-wielding shadow warriors, "ninja" is here slang for a thief of valuable in-game items. The above video was taken from a private World of Warcaft (WoW) server, emulating the 2006 iteration of the popular online game, soon to be officially re-released by Blizzard as World of Warcraft Classic.

Yet, the bootleg version of the massively-multiplayer icon is a special beast beyond just game mechanics. Some of its core social dynamics serve as excellent - if accidental - microcosms of real-world phenomena.

These servers are third-party clones of proprietary software, and hence are of questionable legality. Taking advantage of spotty IP protections, most are hosted overseas - in Russia, for example. They are typically organized into non-profit "projects," or amateur initiatives to create versions of the 2006 iteration of the game. Each private server project hosts at least a couple of "realms" or instances of the game world in which players can interact.

Most large private servers carry thousands of people, and tend to be radically weighted towards a single primary realm in population. Players from around the world fight, banter, organize and develop a virtual social system in their free time. It is a fairly close-knit group, but only lightly moderated by volunteer Game Masters. Players themselves must play a role in this community moderation if they wish to coexist productively.

The mixture of old-school WoW's original quirks, private servers' laissez-faire ethos, and their small but dense populations render them petri dishes for "natural" social experiments. At issue is how near-total strangers are able to make their own rules and institutions, and cooperate effectively and on the fly for common rewards.

Servers may have their share of delinquents - okay, a large share - but the anarchy is more orderly than you'd anticipate, given the difficulty of developer-side rule enforcement. In fact, the conditions that allow for unplanned cooperation among strangers are extremely important topics among the big debates in social sciences and public policy. Political scientist Mancur Olson identified problems in the real world in which individuals' conflicting interests impede common goals as "collective action problems." Concern with such dilemmas dates back to philosophers David Hume and Thomas Hobbes.

One of the largest and most consequential collective action problems is the "Player vs. Environment" (PvE) raiding scene in the game. Old-school WoW has several large "raid" dungeons pitting 20 and 40-player teams against powerful computer-controlled monsters. These encounters are typically the most difficult end-game challenges, but also the most rewarding. Not only is the loot found within among the best around, but "raid gear" confers a sort of prestige, and obviously, we all want to saunter around Ironforge with shinier stuff than the next guy.

So there's huge incentive to raid, but you might have to spend often upwards of six hours in the crucible of high-end PvE with 39 other people, many of whom desperately want the same valuable stuff you do. They are also probably total strangers.

That's basically what Blizzard left us with in 2004, and it sounds like a powderkeg of potential disputes over who deserves loot, or whom is at fault for getting everyone killed. Yet, players have overcome these challenges, using a variety of creative avenues.

With nobody officially in charge at the outset, leaders come out of the woodwork to direct these complex operations. Some raid leaders do it for the joy of accomplishing something difficult or for the bragging rights provided by a "server first" boss kill, while some experienced players may behave entrepreneurially by putting together raids for in-game money. In a scenario of mutual efforts but uncertain, scarce rewards, one of the first things that must emerge is a rule system. This is a de facto necessity - even "first-come-first-serve" is a rule system. Since the infancy of this gaming genre, enterprising players have invented various systems of their own, with no one system being "official." It's a marketplace of institutions in which players converge on the rulesets that that benefit them most.

Eventually, a few dominant systems rose from the massively-multiplayer gaming community. The iconic DKP system is a points-currency scheme, where players receive "Dragon Kill Points" for participating in raids, which they can save or spend in player-organized auctions for loot, whereas "gold-bid" systems use in-game currency (the proceeds of which often provide income for those "entrepreneurial" leaders).

Most raids, especially informal pick-up-groups, tend towards "Need Before Greed" (NBG) systems. Players can roll the virtual dice against each other for items their characters genuinely need for advancement, as opposed to items that are more of a luxury. Since what constitutes real need is frequently disputable, secondary rule systems dictating priority in cases of competing claims on a given item may crop up in NBG raids as well.

Sometimes new, influential raiders can introduce rule schemes. On one server, the status quo consisted mostly of Need Before Greed and auctions, but after a merge with another server, a large influx of experienced raiders became the new kids on the block. Having many successful dungeon runs under their belt, they imported the "Wishlist" system, in which each raider may reserve one item for themselves. If multiple players reserve the same item, they then roll the dice on it. The efficiency of this idea soon became obvious, and within a few weeks Wishlist (and the players that imported it) took over the raiding scene.

Joining a raid group is a significant investment, in time, effort and in-game resources. Players are putting a lot on the line, and expected rewards can be highly uncertain. Given this investment risk, players have sought out means to ensure not only the use of fair loot rules, but institutional mechanisms to make sure they can complete the dungeons regularly and smoothly. Hardcore raiders' best tool for this is the game's Guild system, offering built-in organizational features such as a common chat channel and active roster of members. A competent raiding guild offers members a chance to clear dungeons in an organized manner with skilled leadership, and to win items in a loot system that is reliable and fair.

Like "Sharphealz," the ninja looter in the video, there is a strong incentive to abscond with others' items, or to just coast on everyone else's efforts in the heat of battle. To hedge against this behavior, guilds offer ingredients to reduce the likelihood of cheating: longevity and reliability, accountability, as well as simple bonds of friendship. Guilds frequently expel members who violate rules or behave boorishly, and a player without a guild is one at a big disadvantage. A player can get to know and care for their guildmates' welfare, and everyday social interaction builds rapport between members. It's tough enough to be kicked from a guild, tougher still to lose your in-game friends.

The accountability mechanisms within guilds rely heavily on reputation, much like within the broader game community. Since the vast majority of players are stuck on the same realm, and the community is fairly small, informal social sanctions provide punishment for rulebreaking. Sharphealz' widely shared video provides documentation of his crimes, and it cemented the player's reputation as a troublemaker for quite some time. It is not uncommon to hear public shaming in the game's chatbox, marking various players as cheaters or slackers. A person with a bad reputation doesn't get invited to groups - a big handicap in an inherently collaborative environment. Indeed, many hotly contest public accusations for this reason.

There are, of course, "troll" players who thrive on infamy. The original ninja looting video was recorded by the thief himself. Indeed, a side effect of this melting pot of a server is that although players may cooperate to achieve certain gameplay goals, large strains of animosity and angry flare-ups run through the community. Many raiding guilds keep "blacklists" of prohibited players for this reason, while others collapse from their own internal strife. Some particularly frustrating raid encounters are wryly dubbed "guild-breakers" for their propensity to spark conflict.

What is clear from the common problem of raid organization is that players can figure it out naturally, overcoming complex challenges of focus and coordination as a hobby. They jerry-rig institutions to provide accountability and avoid disputes, as well as to bring people together in the first place.

The power of community networks, anticipation of future opportunities, and high-value payoffs influences our behavior on Earth in myriad ways, and there is no reason why it would be otherwise on Azeroth.

Anne Hobson is a program manager at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. Leo Plumer is an MA Fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.

Filed Under: anarchy, community, economics, order, private servers, world of warcraft

Axios Ridiculously Calls For Newsrooms To Ban Journalists From Having Opinions Online

from the view-from-nowhere dept

For years we've talked about the journalistic perils of what journalism professor Jay Rosen calls the "view from nowhere," or the pretty common misconception that journalists should prioritize factual symmetry in news reporting, instead of actually trying to get to the truth. This usually results in "he said, she said" reporting where both sides are given equal weight (even if one side is clearly being intentionally misleading), with the idea that the reader can then ferret out the truth, while the journalist him or herself stands stoically protected from accusations of "bias" because they refused to take a real stand.

Rosen put it this way during an interview back in 2010:

"Frequently it places the journalist between polarized extremes, and calls that neither-nor position “impartial.” Second, it’s a means of defense against a style of criticism that is fully anticipated: charges of bias originating in partisan politics and the two-party system. Third: it’s an attempt to secure a kind of universal legitimacy that is implicitly denied to those who stake out positions or betray a point of view. American journalists have almost a lust for the View from Nowhere because they think it has more authority than any other possible stance."

The problem, as you'll often see in modern reporting, is this bid to embrace false equivalency often tends to ignore what's actually true. It's a major contributor to the partisan strife that's ripping the country apart, and it's frequently exploited by companies and politicians who use it to perpetuate outright falsehoods, since even the dumbest ideas must, under this model, be treated with perfect journalistic symmetry, in the process inadvertently advertising the false claims (especially if you choose your headlines poorly).

But a journalist's job isn't just to just report cold claims, it's to get to the truth -- often by adding necessary context, or, in some instances, by not running a story at all if the entire underlying premise is fluff and nonsense. Trump's manipulation of the press is the pinnacle of this dysfunction, with every false claim bouncing around an echo chamber of false objectivity and good intention.

One extension of the view from nowhere is the newsroom idea that journalists should be unfeeling automatons, hiding their true opinions (even if those opinions are fueled by years of experience on a subject) from readers, especially when engaging on social media. Case in point: late last week Axios co-founder and CEO Jim VandeHei penned this blog post in which he proclaimed to have devised a solution to the "fake news" problem that's currently plaguing the world. One of those solutions, according to VandeHei, was to urge newsrooms to ban reporters from having opinions online:

"News organizations should ban their reporters from doing anything on social media — especially Twitter — beyond sharing stories. Snark, jokes and blatant opinion are showing your hand, and it always seems to be the left one. This makes it impossible to win back the skeptics."

Yes, banning reporters from joking online will surely fix everything.

VandeHei's "solution" solves nothing, but does indicate he doesn't understand that in the modern media age, the sterile, false objectivity he supports directly contributes to the fake news he proclaims to have the cure for, and the "skeptics" he's trying to appease long ago stopped making claims of bias in good faith, since a key component of modern partisan tribalism involves wielding the word "bias" as a bludgeon against any discordant opinions. Meanwhile, why can't reporters make jokes if their reporting is driven by integrity? How exactly does a snarky comment on Twitter magically erode a career's worth of reporting?

Under this model of journalism, instead of debunking clearly false statements and giving them less (or no) weight when appropriate (say when Ajit Pai clearly spreads falsehoods about net neutrality for the eightieth time), these kinds of reporters tend to give those claims equal attention, assuming the reader can ferret out the truth.

That manifests itself constantly in issues like net neutrality, where false claims are often amplified in headlines and throughout a story, counterbalanced by the other take (usually partisan in nature) as if both sides are somehow correct and Ajit Pai hasn't been lying his ass off on this subject for the better part of two straight years. The only positive outcome of that falsely-symmetrical reporting is you've amplified what's often outright disinformation and given the reader no context to debunk it. More well-rounded reporting in the post-truth era absolutely must evolve, stop playing patty cake, and call a duck a duck when it's factually appropriate.

Donald Trump, Ajit Pai and their ilk thrive under this view from nowhere because it often assumes that to be fair, blatant lies are one valid half of a two-sided, always perfectly symmetrical story. Fortunately numerous folks were quick to ridicule VendeHei's take, including New York Times TV critic James Poniewozik, who quite correctly points out that you don't just magically "build trust" by banning your reporters from sharing years of informed opinion on social media:

Others, like reporter Karen Ho, were correct to point out that white, wealthy males are usually the ones who get to define what objectivity means in many major media newsrooms, something VandeHei doesn't seem all-too keyed in on:

Again, "he said she said" reporting has been absolutely fatal for America, and to suggest that banning your reporters from expressing their informed opinions (or god forbid being snarky about it on Facebook) doesn't even come close to understanding the problem, much less fixing it. And this is all before you even get to the oceans of disinformation (both foreign and domestic) that's been happily kicking the truth in the crotch in this country for the better part of a generation.

As we've noted previously, it's not "bias" if you're genuinely seeking the truth or pointing out obvious falsehoods, snark or not. It's "bias" if you refuse to call a patently false statement a false statement, or help give clearly inaccurate arguments weight they don't deserve. This belief that journalists should stand stoically silent in an illusory "middle," apply perfect dispassionate symmetry to all things, and then assume the reader can just mystically infer the truth from your sterile, often incomplete reporting--is one of the biggest reasons we're currently facing a disinformation apocalypse in the first place.

Filed Under: community, jay rosen, jim vandehei, journalism, opinion, trust, truth, view from nowhere
Companies: axios

It Took All Of Three Hours To Code A Plugin That Makes News Comments More Civil

from the irredeemable-trolls dept

For years now the narrative du jour in online news circles has been that the news comment section is an irredeemable menace. Outlet after outlet has informed us that they care so much about the integrity of public dialogue online that they've decided to ban website visitors from commenting on news articles entirely. Usually, these bans are accompanied by some sanctimonious claim that banning people from speaking on site was done because the outlet in question just really "valued conversation," or because they're just ultra-interested in building better relationships.

In reality, the motivation isn't quite so noble. Most websites just don't want to spend the time and money it takes to cultivate a healthy online community, in large part because bean counters can't monetize or measure the impact of quality discourse. Other outlets don't like having such a visible area where users can point out errors in news coverage. Most really would prefer we return back to the era of "letters to the editor" where the medium gets to dictate whose voices are deemed important, and whose are not. In that way it's often part power play, and part laziness.

Time and time again, these outlets have claimed that banning comments is the only option because cultivating on-site community is too expensive and time consuming. Again though, there's every indication that making the news comments section useful again doesn't take all that much work. In Norway, for example, a five-person team tookt all of three hours to code a WordPress plugin with a comically-simple premise:

"It was a basic idea," NRKbeta developer Ståle Grut told a South By Southwest crowd on Tuesday. "Readers had to prove they read a story before they were able to comment on it."

The plugin doesn't take much work to install, and website operators simply have to build a simple multiple-choice Q&A based on the article to make it work. The coders work for NRKbeta, the tech-testing group at Norway's largest national media organization. And they were quick to point out that asking your on-site community for help (as opposed to, say, implying that their input is no longer relevant) often pays dividends:

"Use your audience," Grut told the crowd. "Talk to them; play with them. They'll like you better for it."

A WordPress plugin could force users to correctly answer a few multiple-choice questions before the page's comment field would appear. Once he got to the office, he and fellow staffers spent three hours building the plugin, which Grut reminded the crowd is wholly open source. "Naturally, this was paid for by Norwegian people, so you can thank them if you want to implement it," Grut said when emphasizing that he was happy if more sites tried it out."

And while the folks behind the plugin note that it's not a magic panacea for all news comment hostility, the fact that they were able to modestly tame news comment hostility with a bare modicum of effort suggests the "irredeemable" and widely maligned news comment section isn't quite the unfixable hellscape many lazy, cheap and threatened media outlets profess it to be.

Filed Under: civility, comments, community, interaction
Companies: nrkbeta

Wikimedia's Transparency Report: Guys, We're A Wiki, Don't Demand We Take Stuff Down

from the good-for-them dept

Wikimedia, like many other internet platform these days releases a transparency report that discusses various efforts to takedown content or identify users. We're now all quite used to what such transparency reports look like. However, Wikimedia's latest is worth reading as a reminder that Wikipedia is a different sort of beast. Not surprisingly, it gets a lot fewer demands, but it also abides by very few of those demands. My favorite is the fact that people demand Wikimedia edit or remove content. It's a wiki. Anyone can edit it. But if your edits suck, you're going to be in trouble. And yet, Wikimedia still receives hundreds of demands. And doesn't comply with any of them. Including ones from governments. Instead, Wikimedia explains to them just how Wikipedia works.

From July to December of 2017, we received 343 requests to alter or remove project content, seven of which came from government entities. Once again, we granted zero of these requests. The Wikimedia projects thrive when the volunteer community is empowered to curate and vet content. When we receive requests to remove or alter that content, our first action is to refer requesters to experienced volunteers who can explain project policies and provide them with assistance.

On the copyright front, they only received 12 requests. I actually would have expected more, but the community is pretty strict about making sure that only content that can be on the site gets there. Only 2 of the 12 takedowns were granted.

Wikimedia projects feature a wide variety of content that is freely licensed or in the public domain. However, we occasionally will receive Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) notices asking us to remove content that is allegedly copyrighted. All DMCA requests are reviewed thoroughly to determine if the content is infringing a copyright, and if there are any legal exceptions, such as fair use, that could allow the content to remain on the Wikimedia projects. From July to December of 2017, we received 12 DMCA requests. We granted two of these. This relatively low amount of DMCA takedown requests for an online platform is due in part to the high standards of community copyright policies and the diligence of project contributors.

This is actually really important, especially as folks in the legacy entertainment industry keep pushing for demands that platforms put in place incredibly expensive "filter" systems. Wikipedia is one of the most popular open platforms on the planet. But it would make no sense at all for it to invest millions of dollars in an expensive filtering system. But, since the whining from those legacy industry folks never seems to recognize that there's a world beyond Google and Facebook, they don't much consider how silly it would be to apply those kinds of rules to Wikipedia.

Also interesting is that Wikipedia has now been dealing with some "Right to be Forgotten" requests in the EU. It notes that in the six month period covered by the transparency report they received one such request (which was not granted):

rom July to December of 2017, the Wikimedia Foundation received one request for content removal that cited the right to erasure, also known as the right to be forgotten. We did not grant this request. The right to erasure in the European Union was established in 2014 by a decision in the Court of Justice of the European Union. As the law now stands, an individual can request the delisting of certain pages from appearing in search results for their name. The Wikimedia Foundation remains opposed to these delistings, which negatively impact the free exchange of information in the public interest.

I don't envy whatever person eventually tries to go after Wikimedia in court over a Right to be Forgotten claim -- though it feels inevitable.

There's more to look at in the report, but it is interesting to look over this and be reminded that not every internet platform is Google or Facebook, and demanding certain types of solutions that would hit all platforms... is pretty silly.

Filed Under: community, editing, takedowns, transparency report, wikipedia
Companies: wikimedia