Hacker News Reader

Comment by niklasd | Hacker News Reader

I always find it baffling that news pages are amongst the worst offenders regardings tracking (at least that how it feels). Here in Germany we have news pages like Spiegel Online, whose journalists criticise Facebook et al. in quite harsh words, but you can't read any of these articles without loading a bazillion tracking cookies on your browser. This probably stems from the seperation of webpage tech, advertising and newsroom, but it strongly feels for me that these newspapers are not living by the values they preach.

View on HN

> it strongly feels for me that these newspapers are not living by the values they preach.

This isn’t as big a problem as people make it out to be. Their role is to report. If they are corrupt but still report on corruption, then they haven’t failed as journalists, merely as an organisation. If they violate privacy, but still report on it, same deal. We can denounce them while still appreciating their actual reporting.

Problems arise when their nefarious behaviour affects the actual reporting. But, ironically, the more hypocritical they are (i.e. the more they report on the thing they do wrong) the less likely that is.

I’d say with every damnation of a news organisation for their privacy violations, we should in parallel celebrate their dedication to report on that which they are guilty of. The alternative of total silence would be worse.

> If they are corrupt but still report on corruption, then they haven’t failed as journalists.

In this specific case, yes, I think they have failed. It's different when you're a non-vegan writing about veganism and critizise non-vegans.

It's not okay to be corrupt and condemn corruption in your article. I can't take your opinion seriously if you don't live at all by the values you seem to protect or preach for in your writing...

This is called a tu quoque fallacy: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque

“ Tu quoque (/tjuːˈkwoʊkwi, tuːˈkwoʊkweɪ/;[1] Latin for "you also"), or the appeal to hypocrisy, is an informal fallacy that intends to discredit the opponent's argument by asserting the opponent's failure to act consistently in accordance with its conclusion(s).”

A moral framework is only useful if it can be adhered to. If we define "good" as a standard that can't be maintained it ceases to be a valuable definition.

Sometimes "whatabouism" is just trying to make sure that the standard being demanded is based in reality and can be maintained by others who find themselves in the same position.

Hypocrisy has value in instances like addiction. As an addict I could advise against certain behaviors or whatever.

This is different. They are taking part in the same behavior they are calling out as detrimental while being detrimental to the people they supposedly giving advice to.

It’d be like a addiction counselor selling addictive substances to people the counselor is advising about addiction.

It's pretty common for addictologists to prescribe opiate substitutes, benzos or antidepressants to their patients. All of which addictive substances.

But then, they do it because it's supposed to help their patients with their addiction, not because it makes them money.

Don’t take so literally.

In any case, it’s not like these outlets are doing it to eventually wean people from trackers by tracking them more mildly.

10 years ago there was a lot of loud voices calling for the news industry to join the 21st century in regards to their technology and publishing practices.

They have.

I’ve think we’re all in glass houses on this one because we’ve helped make Google and Facebook into absolute juggernauts by letting them track the hell out of us while continuing to use their products. It shouldn’t be surprising that a struggling industry like journalism would follow suit.

> Here in Germany we have news pages like Spiegel Online, whose journalists criticise Facebook et al. in quite harsh words, but you can't read any of these articles without loading a bazillion tracking cookies on your browser.

There is some good part about this: There is some amount of separation of journalism and business. The journalists should be free to report anything they consider worthy to cover and the business running the site and going out to advertisers etc. doesn't influence this. This is good as it prevents big advertisers from preventing bad reporting. Of course it doesn't fully work, but in Germany it is better than in many other places in that regard.

Press is informally exempt from these regulation in exchange for favourably reporting of EU Commission dealings.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com