Pirate Party Founder Rick Falkvinge Launches News Service

New submitter lillgud writes: Rick Falkvinge, founder of the first Pirate Party, has unveiled a news service to compete against "oldmedia." The news stories will be three sentences in length, and distributed within shareable images. Falkvinge says this obviates certain parts of the industry — for example, there will be no need for clickbait headlines, because there's nothing to click on. The business model is based around advertising, but those ads will simply be a watermark on the image. Thus, no worries about adblock, and no concerns about ad networks collecting information from users. The service is targeted to be operational in Q3. Each writer will be paid in accordance to a revenue sharing model, and Falkvinge's goal is for each part-time writer to receive €125/month in exchange for four stories (12 sentences).

Comments

Thanks, I'll pass

[aaaaaaargh!]

A news service brought to you by politically motivated "writers" with a political agenda and served via images with included ads? Thanks, I definitely don't need this kind of "news".

Re:Thanks, I'll pass

[Anonymous Coward]

because the "other" news you have been reading are not illegitimate children of political agendas and advertising...

Re:Thanks, I'll pass

[meta-monkey]

I'm concerned too about the "politically motivated" part.

For instance, I agree that there is a problem with excessive use of force by police in America. Reddit, however, has a massive boner for any kind of story that depicts police as bloodthirsty maniacs. So you'll see a front page story with a headline like "Man Shot 47 Times by Police Just For Asking For Directions." And you open it up and find out the guy was raging on PCP, firing at cops yelling "Which way to hell pigs?! 'Cause that's where I'm sending you!" The authors of such titles are far more concerned with pushing their narrative than informing people.

It's bad journalism to assign motives to people that they didn't tell you and you can't back up with facts. Just report the facts, and leave the opinions to the comments section.

I support the Pirate Party, but I'm wary of any "news service" run specifically by any political party.

Re:Thanks, I'll pass

[tmosley]

The reason for your wariness is that the vast majority of other political parties advocate for something other than freedom.

When you have a political party that advocates something approaching pure freedom, then their political affiliation is no longer destructive. Freedom is good. Any thing which promotes freedom is a virtue, not a vice.

Re:Thanks, I'll pass

[Troed]

I support the Pirate Party, but I'm wary of any "news service" run specifically by any political party.

Thank you for your support, it's much appreciated. However, Falkvinge's news service isn't in any way affiliated with the Swedish Pirate Party (or any other Pirate Party as far as I know). Interests and viewpoints might of course overlap regardless.

Re:Thanks, I'll pass

[Anonymous Coward]

When you have a political party that advocates something approaching pure freedom, then their political affiliation is no longer destructive

Just because someone's political orientation agrees with yours, and is on the good side, doesn't in any way stop their political affiliation from being destructive. It is pretty easy for people to unknowingly sabotage their own side, because they go too far. As with what the GP was talking about and many other examples, if you misrepresent reality in the name of pushing an agenda, or even introduce strong bias, you risk hurting your own cause when others call you out for your mistakes.

A good cause doesn't need more preaching to the choir that just polarizes everyone and kills any spread of an idea to new people.

Re:Thanks, I'll pass

[meta-monkey]

That's incredibly naive.

Pretty much everybody likes "freedom." But everybody has a different idea of what "freedom" means. A conservative businessman might argue environmental regulations impinge on his freedom to dump soot from his factory into the air. Hippies downwind might argue allowing the businessman to dump soot into the air is impinging on their right to breathe.

The Communist Party of the USSR defined "freedom" as "absence of opposition to world socialism." Some Muslim clerics believe freedom (or peace, at least) is found in "submission to the will of Allah."

I do not want a news service that promotes "freedom." I want a news service that provides facts, and promotes nothing.

And claiming to be unbiased, when in fact presenting a bias sabotages the arguments. Liberals have such a distrust of Fox News that Fox could say "the sky is blue" and liberals will question their accuracy and motives. Truth, reported from a news agency founded by somebody who founded a political party (that is seen by many as radical, and these very people we're trying to convince to change their minds) will be seen as suspect, and rejected.

There's a cognitive bias for this. I can't remember the name of it, perhaps one of you can, wherein truthful arguments presented by someone you don't like reinforces your adherence to your own false beliefs.

Re:3 sentences?

[squiggleslash]

I suspect the aim is to replicate the "News in brief" segments that used to be parts of paper newspapers (they may still be, I dunno, been a while since I read one...) and TV news shows. The idea is that you can get a rough idea of what's happening in the world in just a minute or two.

Actually I think in the Internet age it's a pretty good idea. If you need more information, you can always google it with Bing, Yahoo, or another search engine that searches news sites. The alternative right now, which the write-up above alludes to, is just seeing a bunch of headlines, but headlines are designed to make you click through to the big article, not provide you with a summary, so they usually purposely miss out information that gives context.

Headline version: "You won't believe which building in New York is on fire right now!"
Summary version: "Jets crash into WTC in NY. Thousands likely trapped in what officials are saying is likely a terrorist act. Collapse seems imminent."

Headline version: "What happened after THIS famous athlete checked into a clinic!"
Summary version: "Olympic Gold winner Bruce Jenner has undergone sex reassignment surgery and wishes to be known as Caitlyn Jenner. Caitlyn recently revealed that she had been dealing with gender dysphoria since her youth. Her family has issued statements of support for Caitlyn's transition."

Headline version: "You better hope THIS escaped con isn't hiding in your basement!"
Summary version: "Police are warning residents near a North Country state prison to be on the lookout for two escaped prisoners (pictured.) The prisoners, Richard Matt and David Sweat, are considered highly dangerous. If you see them, do not approach, and call 911 immediately."

I don't know about you, but I get more information from the summaries, and for the most part I'm unlikely to need more information unless I'm really genuinely interested in the subject of the story.

Re:Independent News Wins!!

[gnupun]

This news site is hypocritical. One the one hand they encourage pirating IP of other companies, and on the other hand they charge advertising fees for their own IP (news articles). Pirate activists give activists a bad name.

Three Sentences?

[Jason Levine]

The news stories will be three sentences in length, and distributed within shareable images.

So their news stories will be brief snippets (no linking to sources or examining issues in depth). In addition, they will be posted as images so you can't copy snippets easily (not without posting the entire image). Three sentences is fine for a comment, but news stories often require more in-depth coverage than three sentences will allow.