Bozicus

I think it's a bold move for Google to present Perspectives as a new feature to improve user experience when really, it just makes it easier for them to present sponsored content in different formats. Astroturfed advertisments (fake "ordinary customer reviews," usually) have been a thing on social media for ages, especially on YouTube, and Perspectives is just giving Google a creative way to get eyeballs on those ads.

Using the Reddit implosion as a jumping off point is also clever, and I think it's evidence that Google doesn't plan on paying for API access next month, or ever. They don't want to take advantage of Reddit's data, they just want to take back the eyeballs that Reddit attracts.

(... not that Reddit was ever immune to astroturfing, of course, but I think strong community moderation made it better than YouTube, which doesn't give users much opportunity to get rid of fake reviews. Now that they have chased off a lot of mods and nerfed their tools, I expect the authenticity of Reddit product reviews to decrease dramatically).

"Many of us may wonder," yep. Some of us are pretty sure it's because Google is now optimizing searches for profitability rather than relevance. They're very careful to avoid fully explaining how the algorithm arranges search results, but I think the algorithm now has more financial subroutines than software behind it.

I disagree with that definition of news. Keeping politicians accountable is certainly one of the functions of the press, but there are a lot of possible news items that don't refer to politicians. "Winter storms hit [location]" is news, but not related to politicians unless it talks about steps local politicians are taking to prevent storm damage (which is not necessary for a good article). Or "Physicists find [particle they were looking for]." That one could be in Science rather than here, but it is definitely news, and I personally think it's hard to shoehorn politics into a discussion of particle physics without losing track of what actually happened. Very few politicians involve themselves in that kind of research (though, to be fair, it might be news if they did).

Whether it's possible to have a purely apolitical news forum is a different question, and I am sure it's possible to put a political spin on almost anything if you want, but I just don't think it's true that news must be political to be news.

Varying levels of user sophistication is definitely something to consider, thanks for mentioning it. I personally would rather see some dubious articles than chase away people who don't understand why I consider those articles dubious. I think that also covers articles with bad heds. "The title tells me something about this story" is a good starting point for a discussion about source reliability. Rephrasing a title also expresses an opinion, and it sounds like we're not looking for the poster's commentary. (I could go either way on that, myself).

I'm not sure I'm with you about "blog spam," though. I agree that it's a subjective characterization, but in my opinion, Cory Doctorow's piece on enshittification is not news. It's certainly not spam, and it is worthy of discussion, but it doesn't serve the informative purpose that a news article does, and I don't think it's meant to. That piece is an analysis of patterns of events over the course of many years, and its purpose is to identify and describe a pattern shown by those events, not to present a detailed, factual account of any of them.

I do think there are blogs that contain news, if that's what you're getting at, and I am open to the idea that certain kinds of commentary might belong in a news forum even if they don't count as news, but I personally would stop short of grouping high-level conceptual pieces with standard news items. I also don't think there's anything inherently wrong with blog posts, but I do think they're usually commentary or personal anecdotes rather than straight news, so if we're looking to avoid commentary and anecdotes, prohibiting blogs might be a step in that direction. (As with commentary by OP, I could go either way on discussing editorials/commentary).

Dang, that's rough. Infinity should look good on her resume, at least.

You're right that "technical difficulties" are not a good defense when they break the law, and neither is "we didn't do it on purpose." I don't think it would be a case where they'd have to pay for the use of the content, though, it would be a case under privacy law. And that would be a lose-lose situation, since if they won the privacy case, they would open a different, potentially nastier area of liability. I'm not a lawyer, but from what I've read, this is dangerous territory. Their safest move here would be to quietly re-delete everything, and try to convince users that the rollbacks never happened. (Aka "gaslighting.")

100% with you on the value of codes and standards. I used to work in a field that was very safe except for the rare occasions on which it was very unsafe, and we all learned not only what the regulations were, but why those regulations were in place. Having the reason explained usually killed any desire I might have had to break that regulation, which of course is why the explanations were part of the training process. "Don't do this thing that is likely to lead to extremely painful injuries" or "make sure to do this thing in order to keep the very expensive machine from breaking" are rules I am delighted to follow.

I read somewhere that Rush had wanted to be an astronaut, but hadn't made the grade for some reason. I wonder if it was because he would have endangered everyone around him if he had been involved in a mission.

Depressingly, it sounds like that controller was not even close to the most poorly-chosen component.

That's a good point. I don't think anyone who works to make or maintain something other people will use likes to see those users screwed over by the boss. It shows that the boss not only doesn't care about users, they also don't care about everyone who works hard to keep those users happy.

Yeah, that would have been smart. But Huffman has publicly (and unwisely) admitted that he admires Elon, which means he is currently not at home to Mr. Smart.

It's not clear to me that this decision is financially healthy for Reddit. Even aside from the consequences of upsetting a lot of users (which has already made advertisers unhappy, since they prefer to advertise to people who aren't upset; there's been a noticeable decrease in ad spending on the site lately), Reddit only makes money from this move if anyone actually pays for the API, and/or they can force more people to use the official app. Whether they get more takers for the app, I don't know. We'll find out next week. But I don't think a lot of people are going to pay for the API. Most third-party apps can't, and neither can a lot of people who might use the API for research.

Basically, only big companies can afford the new prices, and if big companies pay, Reddit will make a profit. But big companies don't become big companies by paying for overpriced commodities. API access for sites that have similar content costs a lot less than what Reddit wants. So, of the big companies that could pay, Microsoft is quietly modifying its products to avoid paying (you can't upload from their hardware directly to Reddit anymore, for example). Google is introducing a service that is meant to take traffic away from Reddit, I doubt they'll want to buy overpriced API data. AIs have already slurped up a lot of Reddit data, and can just scrape the site if they want more. The API is not the only way for bots to get access to Reddit's data, just the easiest. Probably someone is going to pay for API access, at least in the short term, but I really don't see this going well in the long run. People just don't buy products that cost more than they're worth. Even if Reddit's data was worth the inflated price they're asking, the API is not the only way to get that data. And I am pretty sure it's not that valuable to anyone except the people who can't afford it.

Third party apps are the only ones who need API access to survive, and therefore the ideal customers for Reddit's API, but Reddit would rather fish for the customers that aren't there than do business with the customers that are. Or, were, until a few weeks ago. Now--not so much. Christian Selig could have put a significant chunk of change in Reddit's pocket on an ongoing basis if they'd negotiated a decent price, since Apollo was doing well, and Selig wanted to work with them, but no, Reddit had to ask a price Selig literally couldn't pay, so Reddit gets nothing, users lose Apollo, and no one is happy. Infinity is going to try to make it work, but I doubt that'll be much money for Reddit, and I doubt it'll last more than a year, tops.

To be fair, in theory, charging for API access would give Reddit an additional revenue stream, which is probably what Huffman told investors. But no company that actually makes money from selling API access does it at this price point, or without, y'know... trying to keep customers instead of chasing them off. This is how Twitter did it, and Twitter is losing more money on a regular basis than Reddit has ever made. But it's not my business, so what do I know... [/Kermit drinking tea]

I agree, assuming their goal was to have an app that appeals to users. Possibly the one they have appeals to advertisers, although even advertisers probably prefer an app people use willingly.