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posted by mrpg on Saturday January 20 2018, @10:41AM   Printer-friendly
from the unpaid-editor dept.

[...] HuffPost in the US today announced that it is sunsetting its contributors platform — also known as its unpaid blogger platform.

The news was broken by HuffPost itself (which, like TechCrunch, is part of Oath, owned by gigantic carrier Verizon), which directly tied the move to the changing tides (not Tide Pods, although I personally think there is a connection) in the world of news media and how technology is used to distribute it.

"Now, there are many places where people can share and exchange ideas," HuffPost editor in chief Lydia Polgreen writes in a post on the site.

"Perhaps a few too many: One of the biggest challenges we all face, in an era where everyone has a platform, is figuring out whom to listen to. Open platforms that once seemed radically democratizing now threaten, with the tsunami of false information we all face daily, to undermine democracy. When everyone has a megaphone, no one can be heard. Our hope is that by listening carefully through all the noise, we can find the voices that need to be heard and elevate them for all of you."

[...] I'll be interested to see if HuffPost's move signals more of these unpaid blogger platforms (ahem, Forbes) changing tack, and just as significantly whether these sites can find the magic formula to replace it in their revenue streams if and when they do.

Source: TechCrunch


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  • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 20 2018, @10:59AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 20 2018, @10:59AM (#625119)

    Presidential onahole a fetus.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 20 2018, @11:08AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 20 2018, @11:08AM (#625121)

    #freearistarchus

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 20 2018, @02:27PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 20 2018, @02:27PM (#625156)

      journal or STFU

  • (Score: 5, Touché) by Phoenix666 on Saturday January 20 2018, @11:56AM (4 children)

    by Phoenix666 (552) on Saturday January 20 2018, @11:56AM (#625134) Journal

    "When everyone has a megaphone, no one can be heard."

    Obviously the problem in this world is the democratization of information. Can't have that. Can't have everyone thinking they have a voice, and that their voice matters. Can't have everyone figure out who's worth listening to by hearing what they have to say. Instead, dear reader, we will carefully curate the people who are willing to communicate the message we want you to hea...er, that we all need to hear.

    Is it any wonder trust in the media has plummeted?

    --
    Washington DC delenda est.
    • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 20 2018, @06:02PM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 20 2018, @06:02PM (#625220)

      Exactly what I read, too.

      I think this is a good weekend to learn more about GNU Social and Diaspora*. IRC is another good tool for organizing and disseminating information beyond the reach of the oligarchy. The next counterculture will be "hackers," which will be anyone who accesses "darknets" like GNU Social, Diaspora*, IRC, and also independent websites with active and uncensored comment sections like this one.

      (I'm certain people will bristle at my usage of hacker and darknet there, but remember that changing a number in a URL constitutes hacking according to the corporate propaganda [maybe call it Pravdacorp].)

      Every time I visit Google News or MSN or any of the other propaganda outlets, it's becoming more and more obvious how out of touch and lacking of credibility they are. There are local propaganda outlets too, and they keep the cows distracted and entertained with pages and pages of sports.

      Pravdacorp has nothing of value to offer the American peoples. Pravdacorp has divided the USA into two distinct sociological groups with HuffPo/WaPo/Slate/Salon on one end and InfoWars/Breitbart/Faux News on the other end, warring over competing visions of the authoritarian tyranny each wishes our government were, so I feel peoples is accurate right now. We must find a way of rising above this.

      • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Saturday January 20 2018, @08:48PM (1 child)

        by Phoenix666 (552) on Saturday January 20 2018, @08:48PM (#625289) Journal

        That sounds right to me. On a discursive level I would say that having now been on the other side of the divide since the last election, most people are after the same things as the folks from the side I hail from, they just use different labels/terms that have been crafted by Pravdacorp to divide everyone. So there's the need to peer beneath all the fraught terms for the actual meaning of what people are saying.

        Then there's the infrastructure level to carry that discourse. We can do a lot with software alone, but that will only carry us so far as the corps and gov lock down the pipes as they realize how dangerous it is for them to lose control of the message. That bit, the hardware level, I keep grappling with. Sure, there are mesh networks but those can't substitute for the fat pipes at a level that people will naturally use.

        --
        Washington DC delenda est.
        • (Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday January 20 2018, @10:20PM

          by frojack (1554) on Saturday January 20 2018, @10:20PM (#625353) Journal

          as the corps and gov lock down the pipes as they realize how dangerous it is

          I don't see government and corporations as the biggest risk factor here.

          Go back a day or two where someone posted a story about setting up a home web server [soylentnews.org] for remote family members. The fear and fud posted in response was comical in the extreme.

          No No, Billy put down that stick of dynamite, calm down, we can work it out. A home server is crazy talk. You just forgot your meds son.

          There's so much fear and loathing (to say nothing of ignorance) that everybody forgets that this is EXACTLY how the web was first envisioned.

          We have met the enemy, and he is us.

          --
          No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Saturday January 20 2018, @09:46PM

      by frojack (1554) on Saturday January 20 2018, @09:46PM (#625331) Journal

      Came to address the same point.

      I suspect old Huff empire was starting to see far too many dissenting opinions appear on their unpaid blogger platform, as other voices were using the Huff's own stick to beat the owners about the head and shoulders.

      That and the fact that it was being a seeding ground for fake news, and keeping it around (even at arms length) is starting to look like it might attract legal problems. It will be interesting to see if the archives disappear.

      --
      No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by looorg on Saturday January 20 2018, @02:13PM (3 children)

    by looorg (578) on Saturday January 20 2018, @02:13PM (#625152)

    "Perhaps a few too many: One of the biggest challenges we all face, in an era where everyone has a platform, is figuring out whom to listen to. Open platforms that once seemed radically democratizing now threaten, with the tsunami of false information we all face daily, to undermine democracy. When everyone has a megaphone, no one can be heard. Our hope is that by listening carefully through all the noise, we can find the voices that need to be heard and elevate them for all of you."

    This is kind of interesting. It seems to follow a general trend among media outlets. They used to love how people created free content for them, either by blogs or making comments about the news or whatnot. Then they found out that a large amount of them just don't share their believes or view of the world and now they have become a problem -- to many voices to much democracy to much freedom. Democracy just can't handle to much democracy apparently. Better silence some of them so "our" message isn't lost in the sea of voices. We got to enforce the echo chamber of our few precious viewers/readers so they don't go someplace else for their, fake, news. Cause dissenting opinions are apparently now a threat to democracy (or to our bottom line -- which ever comes first or is more important). I personally hope that Huffpost, which more or less just started out as a glorified soap box for Arianna would just go and die in a fire. They won't be missed.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Saturday January 20 2018, @06:03PM (2 children)

      by Thexalon (636) on Saturday January 20 2018, @06:03PM (#625221)

      Democracy just can't handle to much democracy apparently.

      Absolutely, that's what's going on.

      Imagine if you were a well-connected member of the elite trying to ensure certain people won the presidency - possibly because you're getting paid by one of those people. How would you go about doing it?
      1. You'd do your best to pretend many opposing candidates didn't exist throughout the media. Even if those candidates were winning primaries, drawing thousands to stadium-filling rallies, and/or creating more support than ever before for parties other than the 2 big ones that are completely beholden to you. Well, this certainly happened in 2016, in a big way.
      2. If one of these candidates have made enough noise that your ignoring them is starting to become embarrassingly obvious, simply repeatedly declare them "extremists", "unelectable", "unrealistic", "not serious", etc and treat them as sideshows. This also happened in 2016 in a big way.
      3. Cut off other methods for people to advocate for the candidate of their choice. The last thing you want is a situation in which actual ordinary people get the buzz out about candidates that haven't been pre-selected as acceptable. Which, to the chagrin of the elites, the Internet did a very good job of doing in 2016. So there are major efforts underway to ensure that that never happens again, by working with Facebook, Google, news aggregators in general, and so forth to make sure that those candidates can run but can't actually win anything.

      For instance, during the Democratic primaries, about 1/3 of the voters asked in exit polls about Bernie Sanders responded with, essentially, "Who's that? I saw his name on the ballot, but don't know who he is." The problem, from the point of view of the people trying to decide the election outside of the democratic process, was not that 1/3 of voters were completely uninformed about that candidate, but that 2/3 of voters *did* know who he was.

      Now, with this dynamic, you might wonder how Donald Trump was able to break through that. And the answer is in the Clinton campaign emails: They had worked with their friends in the media to allow Trump through the smokescreen, much to the chagrin of most of the Republican insiders who had planned for Jeb Bush to win. Basically, they thought Clinton could beat Trump, but couldn't beat Bush, and broke the unspoken rules of the game. And we all know how well that plan turned out.

      Similar kinds of things happen on a smaller scale in down-ballot races, for much the same reason.

      --
      The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
      • (Score: 5, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday January 20 2018, @07:56PM

        by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Saturday January 20 2018, @07:56PM (#625267) Journal

        Now, with this dynamic, you might wonder how Donald Trump was able to break through that. And the answer is in the Clinton campaign emails: They had worked with their friends in the media to allow Trump through the smokescreen, much to the chagrin of most of the Republican insiders who had planned for Jeb Bush to win. Basically, they thought Clinton could beat Trump, but couldn't beat Bush, and broke the unspoken rules of the game. And we all know how well that plan turned out.

        Yeah, I mean it couldn't possibly have anything to do with the fact that the "news media" is really mostly an entertainment industry which will whore themselves out in whatever way will sell ads the most -- and Trump has always said outrageous things that sell newspapers and get people to watch ads.

        No, it couldn't possibly have anything to do with that... despite the fact that said "news media" continues to cover Trump like crazy every time he does something outrageous, because they know it will attract viewers... and despite the fact that he's already President now and has been for a year, so it can't really be part of some conspiracy theory to pair Trump against Clinton anymore.

        Yes, some Dems definitely thought Trump would be an easier opponent than some others, and perhaps they were wrong. But that's not why the news media covered Trump then, nor why it continues to cover him now.

        And as for your stat that 1/3 of voters didn't know who Bernie was, about 1/3 of Americans can't find the Pacific Ocean on a world map. 1/3 of American voters believe that Obama was born in Kenya. 1/3 of American voters believe that vaccines cause autism. And lets not even start on the higher numbers of Americans who believe silly things about aliens or angels or the Virgin Mary or whatever else. Were there some in the news media who clearly favored Clinton and tried to downplay Bernie? Absolutely.

        But you don't need to postulate some super conspiracy theory to explain a lot of this. The news media, even as it was providing more coverage of the Clinton campaign than the Bernie campaign, also devoted significant time to controversies about Clinton (emails, Benghazi, etc.). It's usually about what's most sensationalistic.

        [For the record, I am not and was never a supporter of Clinton.]

      • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Saturday January 20 2018, @08:54PM

        by Phoenix666 (552) on Saturday January 20 2018, @08:54PM (#625294) Journal

        It sounds like we're all on the same page. The Powers that Be like the illusion of democracy, the illusion of choice, because it keeps people from rebelling or acting in ways contrary to their financial interests. Actual democracy, however, is an existential threat (as it ought to be) to them.

        The last five years have been interesting and revealing in that respect, from Snowden to the rigging the Clintons did at the DNC during the last presidential election. We've all seen exactly how the machinery of our society has been rigged, and how even the rhetoric inserted into the national discourse has been designed.

        The question is, where do we go from here?

        --
        Washington DC delenda est.
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