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Comment by chrisweekly | Hacker News Reader

This looks awesome.

>"The site will explore three broad investigative categories: how profiling software discriminates against the poor and other vulnerable groups; internet health and infections like bots, scams and misinformation; and the awesome power of the tech companies. The Markup will release all its stories under a creative commons license so other organizations can republish them, as ProPublica does."

Also, anyone interested in the high-level question of how technology impacts society is likely to enjoy the only non-fiction book written by one of my favorite authors: The Blind Giant, by Nick Harkaway.[1]

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/970091634

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Thanks for the suggestion! I've also been simultaneously reading You Are Not A Gadget by Jaron Lanier, and The Efficiency Paradox by Edward Tenner, both of which seem to be pretty good reads so far.

Cool, thanks for those rec's too! :)

Glad they mention misinformation! When AirBnb was spamming craiglist with non existing rentals just to capture your email and send you to their website back then it wasnt illegal per se, but was obviously highly immoral despite Y investment (i get that PG and corp doesnt care about morals when the buck is to be made; why wouldnt they invest in for example Uber for abortions if down the road such unicorn can be passed on for a cool billion bucks). Today for such misinformation Airbnb would be booted out of craiglist and probably fined by Fcc. In Europe this is covered by GDPR now, as the law strictly forbids saying one thing, and doing something totally different with captured information.

This is awesome and looking forward to it!

The one thing that is bugging me is - yet another project that depends on the generosity of a rich person, a project that is so important and vital.

Five or so years ago I started a project to make it possible to crowdfund investigative journalism called Uncoverage. We launched with a review in the Times and things looked rosy. The premise: why should rich people - or editors - be the ones deciding what gets investigated? A couple of other projects have made a run at this too. The problem seems to be that the value proposition of “getting investigation” is too abstract for most people, and we’ve all been trained that information, and journalism, is free. The project flopped, as did its competitors like Beacon. The more recently launched Wikitribune is still going. The day we wake up as a society to the power of paying collectively for investigation into what may be hurting us instead of waiting for it to be done for us by the rich, nonprofits or thinly stretched newspapers will be a very important one. I wish I knew how to bring that about.

Well the thing is that somebody has to pay for it and there are pros and cons to every approach.

1. Reader Funded: Accountable directly to user contributions. Common with activists. Good for not being the but needs to raise interest. Sensationalizing is a temptation. Has an echochamber risk as passion sustains it even at the cost of rationality. The viewers must both care enough to support. See cases like Greenpeace trying to ban chlorine as the element of death. 2. Patron supplied: stable funding from a wealthy base. No need to try to sensationalize or generate a profit but control rests with them. 3. Government funded: similar to 2 but vulnerable to politics usually unless held as sacrosanct. 4. Ad funded: A hybrid system of 1 and 2 essentially. A broader base of supporters and only need to care enough to read to support but advertisers have influence. 5. Endowment based - a seed fund internally accountable only. Which means either nothing to keep itself in check or somebody able to exert influence.

There are no easy answers and all exist.

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