Craig Newmark: a survivor from the era of internet optimism | Hacker News Reader

Craig Newmark: a survivor from the era of internet optimism

theguardian.com

179 pointspseudolus69 comments

> So does he think he is unfairly demonised by some journalists and does that rankle?

> “I can’t fault them for not getting around to doing the fact-checking. You know people are busy and a lot of people in journalism have been told by their managers that fact-checking may not be critical.”

This is such an understated burn...

I'm truly astonished and confused by the idea that Newmark and Craigslist, by providing a better alternative to the classifieds section, are anti-journalism. To believe this, one must believe that journalism exists only as a happy byproduct of the advertising business that supported newspapers throughout the 20th century - that journalism does not exist as an independent good. Advertising-funded newspapers are a business model tied to a medium - one of many. Journalism is no more tied to them than transportation is tied to the horse and buggy.

Really it is abundantly clear that the conflation is deliberate because their job dependa on it.

They are nakedly scapegoating tech and spreading bullshit to support their agenda. Which is why they actually are in decline - they just aren't any good or professional. The only one they like is Twitter which allows them to produce stories very lazily and cheaply as the replacement to "man on the street" interviews instead of any actual substance.

What angers me the most really is that they could do so much better yet they decided this has to be their hill to die on.

I'm often astonished by the Tweets someone like CNN will pick to justify a story. Someone with a handful of followers with 8 retweets and 2 favorites becomes a headline story. It's sad.

Well that's what they get after writing pointless article after article, with barely the substance of a tweet, trying to gaslight the population into believing what they want them to believe. No wonder they're failing.

Ebay can only wish they took the heat for this state of affairs.

True, but also consider that now we got Cambridge Analytica instead. Dark times coming.

>To believe this, one must believe that journalism exists only as a happy byproduct of the advertising business that supported newspapers throughout the 20th century - that journalism does not exist as an independent good.

This is a rather positive view of journalism. Are you a journalist? The approval rate of the journalism industry in the United States right now is at all-time lows https://www.knightfoundation.org/reports/indicators-of-news-...

Blaming Craig Newmark for destroying journalism is, in a way, accurate, but, in an important way, inaccurate. Sooner or later, someone on the internet was going to make a free "classified ad" and distribute it. If it wasn't Craigslist it would have been MySpace or Facebook or someone else. Maybe the newspapers themselves would have done it.

Even more than that: Craigslist wasn't alone. Craigslist is the survivor.

And Craigslist itself isn't the juggernaut it once was. Facebook, Zillow, NextDoor and other sites are all taking bits of its market.

It's like blaming the undertaker for murder. Just because he was recently seen in the vicinity of the corpse, doesn't mean it was his fault. He was just there to provide a valuable service.

Probably the way he is arguably more responsible for "destroying" it was by deliberately choosing against selling out for big money. If he had sold out, it would have been monetized, thus costing more money, and it would have been easier for journalism to compete against it.

It's kind of a perverse argument overall, generosity being responsible for killing industry. But even if he had sold out and there had been a higher price point set, someone else could have undercut it, since classified ads are pretty easy. So if anything he just accelerated the inevitable.

But also interesting that the value of journalism (the specialized abilities of the profession) was funded by something that could be commoditized like that.

Makes me think more about the post-scarcity economy. This is an example of how it changed something that could be commoditized, meaning something that didn't take particularly specialized skills and could easily be cheaply automated, but didn't change something that did require specialized skills, like journalism skills.

So maybe that means the way to future-proof is to make sure your specialized abilities aren't funded by non-specialized abilities.

Where I live people use Kijiji instead of Craigslist, so yeah it's obvious and proven. Mainstream journalism died when it became about profit (wasn't always).

* Interesting note. I've seen many complaints and unofficial redesigns touted for Craigslist, but go and take a look at the monstrously ad-ridden Kijiji on your phone in comparison. Craigslist is holding up pretty strong.

What do you mean journalism wasn’t always about profit?

Stations didn't use to rely on or require News programs to make a profit. It was a loss-leader to create prestige for the networks and comply with the FCC's Fairness Doctrine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine

Ah, I see what you mean. I'm not sure the Fairness Doctrine is a model for how to improve the quality of journalism in the future.

During that same time period print newspapers were enormously profitable and were also doing good work.

For people who haven't met Craig Newmark in person, it's relevant to point out here that he is one of the gentlest and biggest-hearted tech people in public life.

Thank you for that insight, more people are quick to `outrage` against a person, fewer speak up for them based upon personal experience and for somebody to make such a positive impression that others will speak good of them. It's nice to see.

So not irrelevant, knowing the person and motives behind the words (if any), effects the words and with that, most positive and relevant I'd say. Thank you.

He’s wonderful. I’ve met him a couple of times and he’s always super friendly.

He's a good follow if you like future-of-journalism topics and cute pictures of birds.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/craignewmark/

Confirmation bias is so strong in most ppl then when you explain to them the mainstream media plays to the narrative that is most profitable for them.

Fake news isn't simply about facts, but news, by definition, entails relevence and importance. I wish i had $10 for things I've seen served/broadcast as news that is, at best, fluffy current events. Meanwhile, real news is ignored.

So true about fluffy news, worse than adverts imho as add nothing and the media's equivalent of cat pictures. Which reminds me of a unintentional parody https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiPa44LxgxE which has one of the most honest news headline, the World has ever seen.

Ahh, the good old times when there were still somewhat important online problems that remained to be solved. He got rich solving one of them. These days I see very little problem solving and lots of problem invention.

My favourite quote from the article: "no one needs a billion dollars". Wonder if that's a reference to "A million dollars isn't cool. You know what's cool? A billion dollars."

> Outrage is profitable.

Reminds me of what have been happening in the past few months on "Weibo" (think of it like the Twitter of Mainland China). Didn't know the details but surely some people have been trying to profit from deliberately inspiring outrages from feminism issues.

Considering that Fox News was basically founded by Roger Ailes to profit from right wing outrage, this shows what it is worth... more than many software companies

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-03-28/fox-ne...

This article is pretty ironic. Have a gander at Craigslist political forum.

It's been a complete cesspool for almost 20 years. In fact they made an effort to clean it up a few years ago. About 10 years back it was really bad.

homophobia, sexism, lies, death threats.

and the want-ad part - up until recently a lot of craigslist was scam ads and human trafficking.

I enjoyed the article, but the only part that is relevant to the title is this paragraph near the end:

> “Americans are much more reasonable and moderate than what you might guess when you see a little Twitter war. But I’m guessing that the purpose of many Twitter wars is to polarise people and, in fact, we’ve seen that happen because you can often trace some of the fighting groups to the same location. Outrage is profitable. Most of the outrage I’ve seen in the online world – I would guess 80% – someone’s faking it for profit.”

A good book that opened my eyes up to the phenomenon of manufactured outrage is Trust Me I'm Lying by Ryan Holiday.

Fear, hate, and outrage release some powerful brain chemicals. I sometimes feel like people are almost literally doing hits of online drama.

Tabloids, daytime TV, and radio shock jocks have always implicitly gotten this and delivered this fix, but social media is to those what crack is to chewing coca leaves.

It’s bad when they bring it into real life. I know people who I’ve always thought “must get high on getting angry” and they’re some of the most unpleasant people to be around.

Reminds me of this video by CGP Grey: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc

This includes The Guardian opinion pieces.

I am surprised their isn't outrage as a service on twitter. I writer needs 10 twitter accounts to say something controversial so that can write about the "backlash" to some event or celeb. Maybe this already exists, just not obvious yet.

Or 10 twitter accounts to rage about the article you just wrote but no one read.

Controversial articles need controversy

This is in the category of "outrage outrage", where we are outraged that other people are getting outraged about things.

Ironically, this is why I personally find the use of "snowflake" and "SJW" so enraging.

I find those terms particularly perplexing because the idea of ridiculing people for their sensitivity to particular political concerns is an exercise in demonstrating your sensitivity to particular political concerns. Cura te ipsum!

"Tu quoque, (Latin for "you also"), or the appeal to hypocrisy, is a fallacy that intends to discredit the opponent's argument by asserting the opponent's failure to act consistently in accordance with its conclusion(s)."

You might find the rest of the wikipedia article interesting. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque

"outrage outrage outrage".

I'm not entirely certain this is necessary. If any article gains any traction at all, you can simply pull tweets from random, completely normal humans, and spin that to make whatever point you're trying to make.

It's... kinda discouraging both how easy this is to do, and how credible it appears on the surface with the right framing.

Not really necessary. There is __always__ some pushback on Twitter. Take a position and you'll find those on your side, and those against you. Confirmation bias is alive and well on the internet.

What continues to shock me is how willing (so called) jouranalist are to use Twitter as a source of reliable and trustworthy info. Again, you can find a handful of tweets to support - or not - _any_ issue.

Journalists don’t use Twitter as the source of truth unless there is no other way to get info. Eg the current POTUS doesn’t even have regular press briefings and uses Tweets to broadcast everything.

Journalists do seem to like Twitter as a platform to debate though. This was where they found it very useful, and why so many of them were early adopters and continue to be active there.

Why do they like Twitter?Today’s issues are so complex that writing long form articles on every event can limit the scope of your views to one or 2 main things while you may still be interested to debate other things. Twitter is a low cost, easily setup platform to do that.

>> interested to debate

Can you elaborate on good debate threads that happened on Twitter?

Please note: so called preceded journalists. That is, there are a vast number of media-ites who think of themselves as journalists. It's not that easy.

This is provided by some of the "mainstream" "press"; Brendan O'Neill in Spiked, for example, can be relied on to produce the absolute worst, most controversial take on something that's just happened, manufacturing a whole load of outrage.

It is obvious most of the time.

Do you assume major companies don't do it to each other all the time? Sometimes they get caught at it. See:

https://www.google.com/search?q=Samsung+paying+students+for+...

Reddit for Sale: https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/bb7t71/reddit_for_s...

Twitter is Outrage as a Service. It's just not a service you have to pay for.

> their isn't outrage as a service on twitter

There isn't? What are all those social media managers doing ?

Not particularly a case of outrage per se, but what's up with articles quoting a couple of ~10 like tweets and pumping some small thing as if the "whole internet" is arguing about it?

Lazy authors, or does it make money?

Both. It’s both highly click-baity and easy to produce.

It launders an opinion that no one at the paper would be willing to put their name to because they would be expected to explain themselves.

The weirdest thing is when the tweets on those articles have < 20 likes/replies

the interesting thing is, quotes have always done this, now we can just see some related metrics.

It ironically almost proves their point

There is a relevant quote in TFA:

> So does he think he is unfairly demonised by some journalists and does that rankle? “I can’t fault them for not getting around to doing the fact-checking. You know people are busy and a lot of people in journalism have been told by their managers that fact-checking may not be critical.”

> Outrage is profitable.

What will it take to make this statement false? Ban online advertising? Any less drastic options?

Outrage fatigue, combined with better filtering? There is plenty of stuff that friends share that you don't necessarily want to see.

> Ban online advertising?

Would this even change anything? I don't think "profitable" is the right word here. Outrage gets attention, and people want that for many reasons, it just happens to align with the ad business model. I'm not even sure it's the most significant factor though.

Yes, but what if you had to pay for your content, instead of having ads pay for it? Would you still consume the same outrage-laden content? Wouldn't the outrage turn against the publishers of that content?

An internet with a different monetization scheme could be a better internet.

This seems like an appeal to authority, supposing that Craig is an authority on internet outrage.

I don't see any data to back this claim up, but maybe I didn't read the article deeply enough.

I'm also suspicious of the folks who label criticism as 'outrage'. I suspect that it's a mechanism for dismissing critics for their tone rather than engaging with their arguments...

I don't know what to tell you. If you haven't noticed the overwhelming mass-production of engineered outrage over the last few years, then perhaps we don't frequent the same places on the internet.

It’s basically every other popular post on Reddit that isn’t a cat picture or joke. Twitters ranking algorithm loves outrage, their highlight reel too.

The data doesn't back up your assertion at all.

I'm looking at the top 25 on reddit front page now:

6 jokes

1 cat picture (which is adorable)

1 outrage post about Nintendo joycons

14 other things (sports, news, events, human interest stuff, science)

3 posts that one might arguably categorize as outrage:

* Donald Trump telling two US house members to 'go back to their countries' (Note, the comments don't seem to be outraged.)

* Ukraine chemically castrating rapists. Plenty of discourse here about wrongful convictions and the ethics of the death penalty/castration/prison in general.

* "I am not a racist, but" starter pack -- doesn't seem to be outrage, but is definitely taking a shot at a class of people?

I see it this way!

No I see it this exact opposite way!

Is there a name for this phenomenon yet? I don’t even know how to characterize it, banal opinion pontificating with zero relevance. The six comments in this sub thread are a net negative to the universe of discourse. HN used to do better.

That's some bunk methodology right there. Perhaps you could explain to us why the top 25 articles on reddit as a whole reflect data on journalism and outrage culture?

Of course r/aww isn't going to have a lot of outrage: it isn't journalism or journalism adjacent. You might want to read the article... it isn't talking about outrage in the missed connections section of craiglist. The article is talking mostly in the context of news and disinformation on the internet.

I recommend you browse top posts in any news related subreddit to get a better idea about manufactured conflict on reddit.

> It’s basically every other popular post on Reddit that isn’t a cat picture or joke

Top is the most popular reddit posts, one assumes. I was pointing out that the parent comment was trivially false but presented as fact.

I was pointing out that your interpretation of the GP was IMO uncharitable given how you interpreted breadth and structure of reddit. You deny seeing "the outrage", but you've now had multiple people point you to instances of where it concentrates and appears. Perhaps your own personal experiences on the internet aren't representative.

Maybe an hour long video essay will explain the concept and convince you of its existence a little bit better: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36nsq2Apods

I specifically mention “that isn’t a cat picture or joke” which implies as the other person mentioned, the news and political subreddits which are some of the most popular subreddits. Even the sports and cultural news ones are full of outrage.

I'm on twitter, I'm on HN, I read the news. I see some outrage, but I wouldn't qualify it as 'mass-produced' or 'engineered'.

I see things like migrant detention, police shootings, discrimination against minorities (and especially the targeting of trans people), climate change, etc. Those things get a response on the internet, sure, and some folks are outraged over them.

But calling it 'mass produced' and 'engineered' is the same thing as saying they are 'virtue signaling'. You are saying, "Those people don't have genuinely held opinions." Implicit in that you are saying, "... but I do."

Additionally, outrage serves a really important role in our democracy. It is a critical tool that can be used to address injustice. It's not the only tool, obviously, but it is an important component in raising the voice of those who are the bottom of our society. Many of us live in relative wealth and comfort and wouldn't otherwise be made aware of how bad it is for the poorest among us without outrage.

It's definitely not the only tool. We should also be engaging in debate and advocacy and charity and organizing, etc. But calling for the elimination of outrage is calling for the silencing of voices that have no other means to effectively engage with the system.

> I see things like migrant detention, police shootings, discrimination against minorities (and especially the targeting of trans people), climate change, etc.

I'm not American. Literally none of those things are relevant to me.

> You are saying, "Those people don't have genuinely held opinions." Implicit in that you are saying, "... but I do."

I didn't say that. You did.

> But calling for the elimination of outrage is calling for the silencing of voices..

Again, your words, not mine.

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