Medium, Twitter Founder on Media: We Put Junk Food In Front Of Them and They Eat It (theguardian.com) 123
An anonymous reader points us to an interview of Evan Williams, one of the co-founders of Twitter, and founder of publishing platform Medium: Ev Williams is not a fan of the increasingly homogenised media he currently sees, with its emphasis on feeding the great, gaping maw of platforms like Twitter and Facebook too often producing what he describes as tantamount to junk food. "It's understandable why media on the web is like it is today," Williams tells the Guardian. "That's not to say there's not a lot of great stuff out there, but a lot of people are dissatisfied with it. A lot of journalists who want to do great stuff are dissatisfied. Advertisers and brands are dissatisfied. We're still stuck in some very naive thinking, with the idea that people consuming media means that's what they want -- it's like, well, we put junk food in front of them and they ate that, so that must be what they want."
Not everybody eats just junk food (Score:1)
The people that don't want it eat something else. And there's plenty of them. Just because something is spoon fed, it doesn't preclude you from rolling your own.
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How can anybody who regularly reads Slashdot complain about "junk food" and "spoon fed".
What percentage of Slashdot stories are "decent" these days? 1 in 50?
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Perhaps you failed to notice that almost every news outlet, regardless of media type, is more interested in feeding cuntish groupthink on social wankfestery than actually covering news.
Nonsense. There are plenty of good sources of news. I subscribe to The Economist [economist.com], and I consider it quality journalism, with plenty of good coverage of real issues, and never a mention of the Kardashians. Most American media is garbage, but that is because that is what most people choose to consume, and they DO have a choice.
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I hope this is a joke.
No, this is a troll. I blocked Vice a long time ago, even on FB where I go to waste time.
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Re:Junk food (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree, but there's a certain refreshing honesty to it as well, not to mention that it's nice when people understand and recognize what it actually is that they're peddling.
I've been referring to quite a bit of the media I consume as "junk food" for the better part of a decade now. Whenever I first came to the realization that that's what it really was, it helped me immediately gain some perspective on how I was consuming entertainment and what that meant in terms of how I value my own time. I realized that a lot of my time was spent consuming empty calories: shows, sites, or games that I really didn't care about at all, but that I consumed simply because they were familiar and happened to be available at the time. That led to a shift in my media diet towards items that were tastier or more substantial.
Practically overnight, I stopped leaving the TV on and allowing myself to be distracted by whatever was on the screen, instead choosing to pursue other activities. The sites I viewed every day were culled, leaving me with just the bite-sized, thought-provoking, or extremely enjoyable ones. I stopped filling my gaming backlog with games that happened to be on sale, instead playing through my existing backlog and only picking up new games if I knew I'd be interested in them years later.
And, suddenly, the way I spent my time started aligning with my priorities better. I had more free time, I was spending more time on projects that mattered to me, and the time I still spent on entertainment was immensely more enjoyable.
Re:Junk food (Score:4, Interesting)
This is an important principle described in a fascinating BBC series https://www.youtube.com/result... [youtube.com] .
In essence, we've been voting for junk political candidates for decades now, so they must be what we want.
No wonder we (the "civilized world") are brain-starved as well as overfed and undernourished.
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Damn, that reminds me that I need to put the parental filter back on Slashdot. Keep me away from it during office hours.
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Agreed! I still eat "junk food" media on occasion (e.g. been playing through an Assassin's Creed game recently), and there can definitely be a place for it in our lives, but I pay more attention to how often and how much I consume. Just last night I was thinking to myself that I had been eating too many junk food games recently and could use something more substantial...something that I could really sink my teeth into.
All of which is to say, practicing moderation when it comes to media consumption is not me
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It's "Mental Bubble Gum" for me. :/ I, too, got it from someone older than I but I heard it sometime in the early 1970s. I wonder where it came from? It's seemingly apt and might be more wide-spread/common than I expected. Or, I knew his grandfather and maybe you! But yeah, bubble gum. It's okay to pass the time with it here and there but too much of it will rot your teeth and make you fat. Also, spit it out - don't swallow it. (That's what she said?!? I'm not sure how well that fits.)
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Sounds a lot like Slashdot (Score:2)
We post crap stories. People read them and comment on them, so they must want crap stories. We give them SJW stories, people read them, and comment. Therefore they must want SJW stories. Slashdot isn't any different than the junk food of Facebook and Twitter.
Don't take this post personally, whiplash. I'm just giving you shit, because you can take it and respond with entertaining and snarky replies.
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We post crap stories. People read them and comment on them, so they must want crap stories. We give them SJW stories, people read them, and comment. Therefore they must want SJW stories. Slashdot isn't any different than the junk food of Facebook and Twitter.
It's outrage culture, more than just the internet is based on it. MTV doesn't show videos any more because more people watch shitty reality shows (mostly to watch the trainwrecks of the people on them.) all while complaining they want their videos back. People may want intelligent, well supported articles on the web, but they don't bother to read them.
People are stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Panama papers (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't it kind of a dog-bites-man bit of news?
Was your former faith in the honesty and integrity of the moneyed and ruling classes actually shaken by these revelations, or was it merely a narrow beam spotlight shining on somewhat you could already see in the shadows?
I mean, name and shame, it's great, but it's more like all it's done is reinforce the existing doubts we have about the wealthy and the powerful.
Re:Panama papers (Score:5, Informative)
I think a lot of that, even with well-informed people, is that people know there's corruption they can't do anything about. Some people are connected, and others aren't. Wealthy people will be able to pay for loopholes that allow them to hide their money, just like tech companies use the H-1B visa rule loopholes to skirt the spirit of the original program.
My reaction to this was twofold:
1. This is going to be a very interesting election cycle in Europe - but nothing will change in Russia or China
2. The US already has so many 100% legal, custom-created tax shelters onshore that there's no need for rich people to transfer their wealth somewhere else.
The only way to stop stuff like this is to play the corruption game yourself. Get a bunch of like minded citizens together, take up a collection, and hand your politicians paper bags of money. Most people don't want to do this, so the system goes on as it always has. FYI, local politics is way more corrupt than national politics, but the scale is smaller so it's less noticeable.
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The only way to stop stuff like this is to play the corruption game yourself. Get a bunch of like minded citizens together, take up a collection, and hand your politicians paper bags of money. Most people don't want to do this, so the system goes on as it always has. FYI, local politics is way more corrupt than national politics, but the scale is smaller so it's less noticeable.
That's not the _only_ way. In the democratic/democratic-republic countries the politicians in question _are_ elected. All you need is a significantly large portion of the populace that is well informed and willing to look deeper than the surface ads and soundbites and vote for the honest politicians who are willing to change the system. There _are_ honest politicians. They can be difficult to distinguish from the well camouflaged crooks and liars and normally operate at an evolutionary disadvantage, but if
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Until someone is convinced of violating the law it is just another data breach.
You can't convince me to break the law!
I think you mean convicted?
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Thanks for missing the point with your grand desire to shoehorn in your political nonsense that totally lacks substance.
I guess you fit the junk food culture just fine.
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Thanks for missing the point with your grand desire to shoehorn in your political nonsense that totally lacks substance.
As a moderate conservative, I'm voting for Hillary Clinton. The only sane choice out of the lesser evil category.
I guess you fit the junk food culture just fine.
I don't watch Fox News.
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no conservative could in their right mind vote for hillary.
Obama practically enacted the Republican agenda over their strident objections. I expect Hillary to continue those policies.
she was my senator, she is a liar, and the most sociopathic of the bunch
That makes her better qualified than Trump et al.
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nobody cares who you cast your impotent vote for or whatever label you like to slap on your back
If that was the case, you wouldn't have responded to my comment. You obviously do care about my vote and my label.
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You act as if they aren't the same.
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The difference being what exactly?
Trump barfs something, preferably controversial, into a microphone, then watches people multiply it. He doesn't even have to do much. People will go Trump this and Trump that, acting as his multipliers and mouthpieces without even noticing that nothing, literally nothing, he says has any lasting quality. Anything that proves to be too controversial (read: could actually really piss people off instead of just getting them to talk about him) is immediately retracted. With tha
Another platform ain't the answer (Score:5, Insightful)
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If you want good journalism, you'll have to run it as a non-profit. Normal profiteering capitalism rarely has the need to go beyond the lowest hanging fruit. Gossip is a bottomless pot of gold.
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Being a for-profit company does not preclude having ethics.
If you want good journalism, write the company bylaws and policies in such a way that rewarding deep, detailed, and objective reporting is mandatory, and journalists who routinely write sensationalist crap lose seniority. It's not a popular way to run a business, but it is orthogonal to the profitability of the business.
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Most news outlets are a copy of each other and the news travels so fast that everyone has the same story, news sites are like hotel comparison sites there is only one or two real sources
report
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Wow... You seriously need to go to the library and read the old newspapers. Seriously... The term "yellow journalism" has a very long and colorful history. You can highlight those words and search, if you want. There were no Golden Years of press. No, I kid you not. The news might actually be *better* now than it was 100 years ago. I realize you don't believe me, I encourage you to go look for yourself. Heck, you can even search old newspapers on Google.
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There is nothing inherent in a non-profit that guarantees this. All a non-profit does is that expenses equal revenue at the end of the fiscal year.
You can run a non-profit news agency just like a for-profit one, and then squirrel away the profits buying stuff. Many big non-profits own real estate and other things in o
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There is nothing inherent in a non-profit that guarantees this.
That is not what I said. But to make the effort, there can be no financial obligations, to the sponsors or the patrons. Otherwise the freedom to offend is lost. And we all know how offensive the truth can get.
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Likewise, a nonproft has no way to save money for a rainy day - as revenues must match expenses ...
No, non-profits can have reserve funds. What they can't do is distribute excess revenue outside of furthering their core mission.
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You might want to stop repeating this same post every week or two.
Just contributing my two bits. If you don't like it, read someone else's comment.
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At least you had recruiters asking you for positions.
Not at that time. I was applying for non-help desk jobs and being told that no help desk jobs were available.
Today I'm getting 20+ calls and emails per day from recruiters even though I'm not looking for a job.
And yet people whine about "Faux News" (Score:1)
And yet people whine about Fox News or MSNBC, which gets their audiences because they provides an alternative viewpoint to what people see as a homogenised (CSB/NBC/CNN/ABC/etc.) media. As for Ev, his complaint sounds particularly phony since his company and other tech companies are in the process of INCREASING the homogenisation of media, with their avowed initiatives to limit fringe communications (that could potenti
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But that doesn't fit the narrative. You know, those "scary right-wing crazies are out there...and we can't let THEM have their opinions."
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The complaints against Fox or MSNBC isn't that they present an alternative viewpoint, but they are often deceptive in doing so. There is enough room for disagreement without flagrant lies of omission. You can never get to actually discussing policy because no one can agree to any facts to begin with.
As far as homogenization, I believe most would say the web was a far more exciting place 10 years ago, with more to discover and more to explore. The opportunity to run across something out of the blue was far g
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If two people agreed on these facts:
- 700,000 human babies were aborted before they were born in the US last year with 7,000 aborted during their final trimester
- US taxpayers avoided $3,500,000,000 of social program expenses last year due to fewer births to mothers dependent on social programs
- 700,000 would-be mothers were each freed of the time and expense of childcare (and potentially severed a lifelong tie to
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Nah, the web is even better now. It is you who has changed and your standards and habits that have changed - and your expectations. It's still as great as it ever was. When was the last time you clicked the link in someone's signature, for instance? The web is a great place. It's even better now - as we can do more and more on it. We can even do that at low or no cost. It's tit simple to make something from nothing - I'm doing it as a bit of a bet, right this second while I type this. (Waiting for changes t
Not all of us! (Score:5, Insightful)
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my impression of the Twitterverse & Facebook is that they're 90% "look at me!"
I'd say it's probably more like 95% or more, really. All so-called 'social media', going back to before Myspace, probably before AOL (I never used AOL) and very possibly even before the general public had access to the Internet (I'm talking about the dialup BBS days, now) has largely been about 'LOOK AT ME, LOOK AT ME!'.
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You realize that Slashdot is social media. A lot of people don't even bother to RTFA and come only to read people's comments and post their own. Look at me, and mod me up!
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Do NOT point that out. It has earned me a whole bunch of "foes" once. The replies were insane. Never mind that there's a friends and foes system, that it's a public system even. Never mind that it is user generated content, complete with our own sub-sections and private interactions. Never mind that there's a voting system.
Nope... It's not Social Media. I have this on good authority. *nods* In fact, numerous experts in the field have told me that it's not. (Being me, I've actually made a point of interjecti
people who think they know what others really need (Score:4, Insightful)
people who think they know what others really want & need, better than those same others, have an unjustifiably high opinion of themselves and equally unjustifiable low opinion of most of others.
logically, only way such people can even think like that is by reducing others to simplified fixed and limited objects, instead of complex dynamic unlimited individuals they, and all human beings, are.
its always a good rule to distrust people who think what others really want. if they ever get to choose for others, they do it badly, inevitably, as history and all socialistic experiments have demonstrated.
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* Projecting much?
* Takes one to know one, eh?
* Classic trasnference
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only ad hominem?
a good example of that in fact.
you do not argue against what i said, but questioning my personal motivation for saying it. you are free to engage in absurd speculations about my motivation (btw even though you use word 'several', "all" of your "*"s are the same), but that wont invalidate my argument.
The web is the new television. (Score:5, Insightful)
What a lot of people don't realize is that social media and the various ad clickbait sites are becoming a primary form of entertainment, much like TV was a generation ago. Everyone looks at this stuff, not just "computer people" anymore. Try this experiment -- go wait for a train for 5-10 minutes, or go to the DMV or any task that requires sitting still for a few minutes. Every single person who has one and knows how to use it is going to take out their phone and start playing. Advertisers and junk food websites like BuzzFeed or Medium are going to want to capitalize on that. TV is almost 100% reality garbage now because most people who still watch "regular" TV aren't all that swift, so the advertisers give them their junk food.
I like the fact that you can still ignore the Internet's junk food for the most part, but the aggregator portals like Yahoo or MSN are full of it. Seriously, people complain about Slashdot but it's actually not bad compared to some of the alternatives.
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When I'm somewhere waiting and have 10+ minutes to spare I pull out my phone and start reading one of my e-books. I'm currently reading the Expanse series.
I constantly get looks and a few comments from people about me being addicted to my phone. I explain that not at all. I'd prefer my paperback copy, but I didn't bring it. the phone is just my backup.
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I agree, it's hard to read in short spans. about the time I get back into the events of the story I have to stop.
the alternative is that I never finish my books.
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TV is almost 100% reality garbage now because most people who still watch "regular" TV aren't all that swift, so the advertisers give them their junk food.
I guess you're still subscribing to cable or satellite TV then, with all those useless 'junk food' channels that have nothing but the garbage you allude to. I stopped paying for cable TV years ago and have been on OTA broadcasts exclusively (I don't stream anything; no Hulu, Netflix, or anything I have to pay for) and my DVR almost always has more on it than I have time to watch during the week -- and none of it is 'reality' shows -- so again, I wonder what your entertainment source(s) are, that all you're
Sometines it is the geek who isn't all that swift. (Score:2)
TV is almost 100% reality garbage now because most people who still watch "regular" TV aren't all that swift, so the advertisers give them their junk food.
Top Ten List For Prime-Time Network TV - March 28th [nielsen.com]
1 Big Bang Theory - Which shouldn't need any introduction here.
3 Empire - Prime time soap opera with a mix of drama and contemporary music - with a Golden Globe and other awards to its credit.
8 NCIS
9 Blue Bloods - NCIS and Blood Bloods both long running police procedurals, a genre that network TV does very well.
10 Sixty Minutes,
The #1 on cable that week was The Walking Dead and #5 The Talking Dead --- and for those of us who have grown weary of the
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Medium (Score:5, Informative)
I would be more impressed by what he's saying if I didn't know he founded Medium, the biggest McIntellectual pile of crap since TED talks.
But it is easier than ever to get good information (Score:2)
You can find some really great Twitter and Facebook accounts to get high curated news and analysis. And you can subscribe to incredible podcasts like Democracy Now! and Belabored and keep up with all the news you want. And then you can go argue with people with different views than you and learn what they think and what they've been reading.
If you want to, you can supplement that with junk when you want to rest your brain. Or you can just watch tv.
But giving people access to the "good" information is a b
Completely agree (Score:1)
Granted I'm a bit pickier than most, I find navigating some websites these days to be incredibly painful and awkward. It's hard to believe this is 2016 and the web is still so bad . And this holds true for "titans" of the industry, as well as ma and pa businesses.
Sturgeon's law applies to internet too (90% crud) (Score:2)
expressed preference time horizon (Score:3)
Economist's love to talk about "expressed preference". Watch what people actually do, rather than listen to what they say they would do. Behavioural psychologists like to talk about time horizon, noting that how we balance near-term desires vs long-term goals is crazy-making.
It's 100% clear that expressed preference is mediated by environmental factors: all too soon, you are what you wallow in. The advertising industry exploits this with the precision of an ink-jet printer nozzle by ensuring that everywhere we go online, the environment is littered with lizard-brain crack cocaine. We know that if our "rational" brain gains is granted control, most people make choices more consistent with their stated long-term goals. In a moment of clarity, people go into their Facebook privacy settings and choose sane defaults. And then, whoops, those sane settings disappear over and over again.
Man vs Borg. Borg wins.
We tend to think of advertising in the competitive, capitalist frame: Coors vs Budweiser in a taste bud alliance set to. Closer to the truth, it's probably Coors & Budweiser vs deck repairs and completing that extra certification after work. Every reminder that you could be drinking a cold beer instead takes another small bite. This is why potato chips are now displayed at eight difference places in every supermarket. Every impression counts, in the extended lizard-brain arm wrestle.
These days it's not Marshall McLuhan saying "the medium is the message", it's the behavioural neurologists.
Over and over and over again, the experimental subjects who self-report being "good" at multitasking (the kind that resembles having persistent social media feeds open on your desktop) actually measure as being the worst, at both the primary task and the distraction task.
Dunning-Kruger, thy name is Twitter.
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s/Economist's/Economists
Bad fingers, bad.
Lowest common denominator (Score:2)
What do you expect? (Score:1)
What do you expect when I read shit like this:
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/hillary-clinton-bill-de-blasio-criticized-for-race-based-joke/
When it's Hillary and De Blasio making racial jokes, it's called "race based" jokes.
Now, what do you think it would be called if Trump and someone else made the same joke?
Answer: Racist.
Yet, no protests, no real mass media coverage of it, etc.
Journalists: You lose credibility when you post shit like this when there's a clear bias. People are wising up to the fact that yo
It is a problem with curation. (Score:5, Insightful)
Too many choices is just as bad as too few. It is not just news sources but even places like Amazon. Look for something like a bike light and you will get hundreds of hits and you will not know which one is any good.
With news sources it is worse. People tend to pick the source that will reinforce your world view aka and runaway feedback loop. That is what we are seeing today all too often. If you support Trump and someone posts something negative you dismiss it if they post something positive you eat it up. Same is true with Sanders and Clinton supporters. It is human nature to want to be right so we often flock to those that will tell us what we want to hear.
As far as news in the US I suggest VOAnews.com Yes Voice of America actually does a really good job of just presenting facts. I also think NPR is pretty good but biased to the left. I like that since I am slightly conservative so I will question their reports. CNN is also not terrible. MSNBC and FOX are both junk and score on average below 50% on accuracy.
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That would be nice but it is not what journalists think they should do. They feel the need to explain things to people. You have no idea how many times I have read a story about the military, aviation, or computers and the facts are just wrong.
The other issue is that journalists are human just as you and I are. It is impossible to have no bias because all humans are bias in one way or another.
The problem is that we are bad at seeing bias in our favor.
Medium (Score:2)
Medium, Twitter Founder
He talks to dead people?
Or does he just like people to know he's average-sized?
Junk food (Score:2)
"Junk food" is a perfect description for many of the social media services- twitter, facebook, instagram, pinterest, etc etc etc.
Twitter is more like the confetti of the internet (along with emojis) but facebook is full-blown junk food: lots of empty calories and zero nutrition. That's they way they want it. And by "they", I mean both the producers and consumers of social media.
Oh, they might claim they want something more substantial, more "filling" and "healthy", but they don't. It's like the drunk on a b
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You must use a period at the end of each "etc." and separate them with commas. Doing otherwise is just wrong grammar. From the point of view of style and semantics, using more than one is redundant, since a single one implies any number of unlisted items.
You'll just have to forgive me, pardon me, excuse me, etc etc etc.
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facebook is full-blown junk food: lots of empty calories and zero nutrition.
That is actually pretty dependent on the reader and their friends. If their friends only post fluff and the reader doesn't hide it, then that's all they'll get. Otherwise, it has turned out more reliable method of communication with contacts than email. It's a convenient and easy place to organize and advertise events from dinner parties to national major events. Plenty of real work gets done for clubs and groups that form their own pages and use that as their communication point.
Remove Twitter Star Chambers, increase quality (Score:2)
A good start would be to clean out the Abuse/Truth & Safety departments and close them down. Fire them with prejudice to ensure that they cannot return.
Then make sure that anyone ever brought in for an Abuse Department role cannot use it for an ideological purpose. If they do, send them packing.
As an additional measure, purge blocklists and then remove API support for blocking. Then remove the blocking feature entirely.
If any complaints are received or threats are made for such actions, do nothing th