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