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Nick Denton Predicts 'The Good Internet' Will Rise Again (pcworld.com)
Gawker founder Nick Denton argued today that the future will be rooted in sites like Reddit which involve their reader community -- even if there's only a handful of subtopics each user is interested in. "There's a vitality to it and there's a model for what [media] could be," he told an audience at the South by Southwest festival.
But when it comes to other social media sites, "Facebook makes me despise many of my friends and Twitter makes me hate the rest of the world," Denton said. And he attempted to address America's politically-charged atmosphere where professional news organizations struggled to pay their bills while still producing quality journalism. An anonymous reader quotes PCWorld: The internet played a huge role in this crisis, but despite it all, Denton thinks the web can be the solution to the problems it created. "On Google Hangouts chats or iMessage you can exchange quotes, links, stories, media," he said. "That's a delightful, engaging media experience. The next phase of media is going to come out of the idea of authentic, chill conversation about things that matter. Even if we're full of despair over what the internet has become, it's good to remind yourself when you're falling down some Wikipedia hole or having a great conversation with somebody online -- it's an amazing thing. In the habits that we enjoy, there are the seeds for the future. That's where the good internet will rise up again."
To show his support for news institutions, Denton has also purchased a paid subscription to the New York Times' site.
But when it comes to other social media sites, "Facebook makes me despise many of my friends and Twitter makes me hate the rest of the world," Denton said. And he attempted to address America's politically-charged atmosphere where professional news organizations struggled to pay their bills while still producing quality journalism. An anonymous reader quotes PCWorld: The internet played a huge role in this crisis, but despite it all, Denton thinks the web can be the solution to the problems it created. "On Google Hangouts chats or iMessage you can exchange quotes, links, stories, media," he said. "That's a delightful, engaging media experience. The next phase of media is going to come out of the idea of authentic, chill conversation about things that matter. Even if we're full of despair over what the internet has become, it's good to remind yourself when you're falling down some Wikipedia hole or having a great conversation with somebody online -- it's an amazing thing. In the habits that we enjoy, there are the seeds for the future. That's where the good internet will rise up again."
To show his support for news institutions, Denton has also purchased a paid subscription to the New York Times' site.
This idiot is one of the people that has made the internet so unpleasant.
More reliable than the New York Times.
I know, faint praise.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Really? Reddit, the epitome of censorship and groupthink circlejerks? Only slashdot compares to that cesspit.
And yeah, Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat all suck balls too.
You mean the one where discriminators like race, sex, country, etc didn't matter? Where free speech reigned and all that mattered was the argument made? The one that routed around censorious assholes and their insecurities?
Gawker? Nick Denton? Oh. So not 'that' internet after all.
Denton and Gawker played a crucial role in creating the divisive world that we now live in by pushing bullshit as journalism and pushing modern social justice cultism. I have no sympathy for him and I'm glad Gawker is dead.
The problem comes directly from the "pay the bills" mentality
"Pay the bills" means clicks on advertizing, which translates to grabbing eyeballs and attention using any means possible.
"Any means" has descended into outrageous and unsupportable claims intended to promote outrage or interest in the reader. Anything and everything that can make the reader outraged is fair came in the advertizing war.
It's become so obvious that there are specific memes and word phrases which are now *avoided* because of their fake usage. "...using this one weird trick", "top ten some-trivia-thing", "such-and-so you need to know", and so on.
Newspapers have always slanted the truth towards outrage and reader engagement a little, but with the feeding frenzy of internet it's now become a completely unhinged cage fight for reader attention.
Complete and total lies are now allowed, rumor and innuendo can be published without vetting for accuracy, reversal of meaning and impact is commonplace.
Many MSM articles simply report tweets that people make; and no, I'm not referring to Trump either. Some random headlines:
Many in this county are poor and sick, and they voted for Trump. What will happen to their health care?
It's way too soon to panic about Fed rate hikes
Rep. Steve King warns that 'our civilization' can't be restored with 'somebody else's babies'
Is any of this news? Which of these tells us what is happening?
Nothing about the MSM is authentic any more, and neither is twitter or facebook. Journalistic integrity and important freedoms (speech, assembly, and press) have been swept aside in the race for readership, political correctness, and promotion of one partisan side.
It's no wonder people are flocking to other sites.
Current events are far less controversial than the internet makes them out to be.
Ds sure look like they will pivot left. Trump has a decent chance at a second term if they do.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
This idiot is one of the people that has made the internet so unpleasant.
One of the perennial problems with on Slashdot is that arguments can simply attack the person making them.
The greeks noted that arguments are made from "logos", "ethos", and "pathos". "Logos" is the logical basis of your argument, "Pathos" is the emotional appeal of your argument, and "Ethos" is the character of the person making the argument.
Thus, here on slashdot we can't discuss constitutional abuse of Kim Dotcom because he's an asshole, we can't discuss wikileaks because Assange is an attention whore, and we can't discuss CIA snooping because Snowden is a traitor.
It's so easy to dismiss an argument out of hand just by pointing out that the person making an argument is somehow inferior.
Nick Denton is such a completely rotten individual that this is not a valid issue that nerds should discuss or post views and opinions about.
This, the man behind the abomination that was Gawker, does not understand what's really detracting from the value of the internet. It's an overload of people (like him) looking to cash in on users that has resulted in the worst elements of the internet. Honestly, who thinks pages that pull elements from 25+ different domains are going to end up being anything but garbage looking to exploit it's users?
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
What "crisis"? Newspaper corporations and giant media corporations going out of business because the cost of producing and disseminating news has fallen is not a "crisis", it's a good thing. For that matter, the abolition of a profession whose main tools for money making were monopolization of information and making deals with the wealthy and powerful is also a good thing. As for Denton and Gawker, they are instances and examples of the rotten state of journalism, and they aren't even the worst.
sites like Reddit which involve their reader community
The future isn't with narrative-controlled places like Reddit.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
>That said, isn't Reddit about 10x more popular (or more!) than Slashdot??
Probably. But while Slashdot is not without its faults, Reddit's designed with them intentionally.
Community moderation by self-elected individuals (with professionals only stepping in if it looks like it could affect Reddit legally, and then only with the corporation's best interests in mind as is to be expected) means Reddit is fractured into thousands of toxic echo chambers, and discussion consists of chasing 'karma'. That in turn results in people posting 'easy karma' meme posts, agreeing mindlessly with groupthink, and no way to filter genuine discussion-driving dissent from trolling.
But it 'works' because it's ego-driven and people eat that shit up even as it makes them miserable.
I question what he means by "the good Internet" if it's going to be brought about by reddit, Google Hangouts, and iMessage. Maybe I'm just being an old fogey, but to me, when you say, "The good Internet will rise again," my mind jumps to a time of text-only email, Usenet, and IRC. Basically, a time when people were trying to create and use open protocols so that anyone could run a server, instead of a bunch of proprietary "social networking" sites and services controlling your experience.
It may seem like I'm changing the subject, but to me, it's highly relevant to what he's talking about. A lot of the prior civility came from people forming their own communities on services that they were able to run themselves. One services like Facebook and Twitter, those platforms control the experience, control which posts you see and what order they're displayed in, and make decisions based on increasing engagement in order to sell advertising. The services that he cites (reddit, iMessage, Hangouts) have something in common with the old-style Internet in that they allow you to form your own communities and control your own engagement with them. One of the big differences, however, is that when you can control the service, you can keep it that way. You're reliant on Apple, Conde Nast, and Google to keep iMessage, reddit, and Hangouts in their current format, and I wouldn't bet on them being the same in 5 years. However, you're able to set up your own email, IRC, or Usenet server, and nobody can really force you to turn it into something you don't want.
Now I'm not saying that we should all be using IRC and Usenet. Technology progresses, and we're always finding better ways of doing things. My point is, we shouldn't be relying on closed, proprietary, ad-supported apps and websites. We need new open protocols. In the same way that anyone can set up their own email service or even build their own email client and server software, we need to enable people to set up their own texting, IM, VoIP, video conferencing, social networking, and forum services. And I don't just mean, "You should be able to set up your own Slack clone," which you obviously can, but you should be able to build a Slack clone and set up a competing Slack service that then allows you to communicate with Slack users. And Facebook users. And Google users. Because they should all use the same protocol.
Keep laughing. Dems are fucked. They're an alliance between ideological leftists and minority grievance groups. If they stick with the grievance politics, they further alienate the working class, pushing them to Trump. If they tone down the identity politics and address working class economic issues, that means pandering to or at least not constantly shitting on poor white people, which will "betray" the "fuck straight white christian males" BLM/feminist crowd.
Dems can't win because the only thing holding them together is a shared hatred of everyone outside the cities. That doesn't win elections.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
vOn Google Hangouts chats or iMessage you can exchange quotes, links, stories, media," he said. "That's a delightful, engaging media experience..."
Or a great way to create a media echo chamber. You know, kind of like my aunt Facebook.
The next phase of media is going to come out of the idea of authentic, chill conversation about things that matter.
Maybe its just me, but the only time I've ever had "authentic, chill conversation" on hot button items are when you have personal links to an individual to know that they are human even if you disagree with them on politics. Even then, that backstop might not be sufficient. There is no alternate vision laid out here for how the Internet can be great again. Instead, this sounds like just empty hope that the current situation is merely a temporary byproduct of a weird political time and that everything will just magically go back to normal.