
Thanks Economist, You Really Know What Has Gone Wrong with the Internet - ZeljkoS
https://svedic.org/programming/thanks-economist-fix-the-internet
======
nothrabannosir
Paid subscription content is the eternal September of HN conversations, and
I’m really sorry to even hint at it again, but on that page I essentially see
two things:

\- regular ad (ok, I see your point here)

\- ads for their own subscription product

I don’t understand how advertising their own product, on their own site, using
limited free samples, is… wrong? Or against the spirit of a decentralised
internet? I wasn’t around during the BB era, maybe that’s my lack of
experience speaking.

Is that not part of the internet we want? I wouldn’t mind people advertising a
paid product on their own site with free samples to try it out. What else do
we expect? Everything gratis always ? Honestly I’m pretty hard-core agpl
freedom Stallman emacs noshower mode, but even I have to admit: this seems
fair.

~~~
ZeljkoS
The things you see as a problem are not the things that annoyed me:

A) The Economist says that article limit is 5 per month. But they waive that
limit for Google Crawler. So they mislead search engine into thinking that
article is accessible, when actually it is not. They intentionally
misrepresent as a free service to attract free SEO traffic.

B) The person who shared link to that article was not aware people like me
will not able to read it. They were also mislead into thinking is an
accessible resource, to get free shares.

C) Even if you don't have a problem with A and B, their UX is ridiculous. One
message to subscribe is covering another message to subscribe. As the same
time there is a newsletter popup which promises you a PDF.

I hope that now you better understands what annoys people. It's is not that
business are trying to make money; it is how they approach it.

~~~
true_religion
Google Crawler is not a human being, cannot agree to terms, and does not make
use of the article.

There is no exchange going on there--wherein if Google Crawler reads 6
articles, it's gained something at the expense of the Economist.

------
factsaresacred
Perhaps the biggest crime is the lack of a comment section, which The
Economist removed - without notice - a few months back.

The comments almost always contained additional insight, knowledge or healthy
pushback against the article they sat below. Much of what the user A. Andros
wrote is a good example -
[https://www.economist.com/user/5518230/comments](https://www.economist.com/user/5518230/comments).

 _Vice_ did the same, as did _The Guardian_ in some cases (on their 'comment
is free' section, no less!).

Information invokes discussion. Just look at us here on HN. Removing readers'
ability to discuss and question one's editorial stance is a bad, illiberal
trend, and makes websites a little less worth visiting.

Oh yeah, and the popups are pants too. That screenshot is missing a mandatory
GDPR and cookie notification btw. Somebody _please_ inform the EU data
protection czars.

~~~
zazen
HN is a fairly rare exception among news-commenting forums, in having a
reasonable level of polite and intelligent discussion. Perhaps the Economist's
forums were another such exception, I don't know. But I know that most
newspapers' online comments sections are cesspools. I earnestly wish that
ft.com, for example, would just eliminate its comment section. Every time I
make the mistake of scrolling past the end of an ft article and into the
comments, I regret it. Thoughtful articles are regularly followed by mindless
dismissals from arrogant users. Questioning of the editorial stance is only
valuable if it's done with a bit of intelligence.

Maybe the newspapers should decide to either "go big or go home" with their
comments section. Either work hard to establish a HN-like community, with a
working community moderation system and meaningful reply nesting, or abolish
the comments section. I think abolishing comments is better than trying to
have a comments section "on the cheap" which gets filled with low-quality
content.

------
andrewstuart
Why are people so resentful of the need for sites to make money?

Especially news and journalism sites.

I will tell you this for sure - if they don't make money, they'll disappear.

So get out your wallet and pay for the new sites that you value and enough
with the smarmy snark poking at companies that need to pay peoples salaries.

How about the author of this post tells us if there are any news/journalism
sites that he/she pays for?

~~~
pdimitar
> _I will tell you this for sure - if they don 't make money, they'll
> disappear._

Perfect, it would be about time. Most internet "journalism" is hyper-optimized
to incite outrage and disagreement so people can "engage with the content".
Facts and critical thinking be damned in the process. Countless articles have
been linked on HN that prove this, including testimony from former media
workers and bosses.

And... maybe natural selection is finally starting to work. Why stop it?

> _So get out your wallet and pay for the new sites that you value_

Those I value don't bug me for subscriptions and don't whitelist Google's
crawler to create the illusion that their content is free. So I am good, thank
you.

> _and enough with the smarmy snark poking at companies that need to pay
> peoples salaries._

No. I will ridicule them while I draw breath. And maybe these people should
find actual productive jobs, there are enough enthusiasts working for free and
reporting stuff around the world already. I don't get paid to tell people at
parties which tech I believe is exciting or that two cops in my neighborhood
have beaten a 16-year old girl senseless for reasons unknown. I have a job and
the rest is just me talking voluntarily in front of people because I felt like
it. Maybe it should be exactly the same with these people you are talking
about.

\--- And finally, "the truth" in journalism does not exist for a long time now
or it gets silenced with two shots in the head labelled as "suicide" (this is
not an exaggerated joke, it's a documented case and you can easily look it
up).

~~~
hoopleheaded
I do not think your arguments apply to The Economist.

>And maybe these people should find actual productive jobs, there are enough
enthusiasts working for free and reporting stuff.

Whatever it is you do to make money, I would wager there is someone who is
enthusiastic and doing it for free. Depending on the time dedication and skill
set involved they may or may not be doing it as competently as you.

~~~
pdimitar
> _I do not think your arguments apply to The Economist._

True, I was responding to a broader point.

> _Whatever it is you do to make money, I would wager there is someone who is
> enthusiastic and doing it for free. Depending on the time dedication and
> skill set involved they may or may not be doing it as competently as you._

Also true, however as a programmer vs. journalist there are several VERY
important differences:

\- Many people tried doing programming for free. It's not sustainable. It's
too much work, too much details, too much legacy from other teams, too much
documentation work necessary, too big a burden to onboard new members,
requires too much knowledge and know-how. I realize part of this applies to
professional journalists, but it's definitely much easier for them compared to
us. They don't need to learn X languages and X^2 frameworks before they go out
the door interviewing people. And no, 4 years in university is NOTHING
compared to what us the tech people do for education, almost every single day.

\- Photographing a potential crime or a PR mishap with your smartphone, then
sprinting for two blocks, and then uploading it to Twitter is only two orders
of magnitude easier than programming, sorry. Your comparison does not hold up
here at all.

\- Programming, being an architect or a lawyer, and a bunch of such
professions require a lot of skill and training. Most journalists I've known
get by just fine by being insolent and knowing how to piss someone off enough
so they spill the beans and give them a sensational story. Again, this is
orders of magnitude easier (and requires much less time!) than refactoring a
huge business system that is barely holding up and urgently needs reviving.

I was not saying that any enthusiastic amateur is as good as a professional
investigative journalist, by the way. I was saying that AT LARGE _the world
provides enough accidental reporting so as to make most traditional
journalistic reporting redundant_. That was my main point.

I was also not saying all journalists are useless. Some are very influential
and important. I did say "most".

As a final point, I have not ever found myself having to twist code or
documentation so as not to piss my employer's benefactor -- and that happens a
lot to the journalists. So IMO most are useless due to them being powerless
and always at the mercy of the powers of the day.

------
amorphous
So in case the OP is too young or forgot, before the internet, the Economist
wasn't free either.

Now, I get a few articles for free, and if I pay (and I suspect a subscription
has become cheaper in today's money) I get plenty of additional stuff to the
paper version: world-class audio, the ability to read on any device or on
paper and other content (e.g 1834 magazine, world in, world if)

Paying for stuff is not how the Internet got wrong. The opposite, in fact, we
need to make sure independent journalism can exist outside FAANG.

~~~
pdimitar
The media keeps being consolidated every day. Visiting popular outlets only
makes them more viable targets for acquisition by conglomerates.

And quite frankly, internet journalism was fine for 15-20 years... suddenly
everybody cries "we're gonna die!". Dunno, seems weird to me -- but I admit I
am not following news about this with much fervor.

Many people wouldn't care if 95% of the internet media disappears tomorrow.
Most write clickbait opinionated BS anyway.

So the alarmism around the issue seems to mostly serve the business survival
interests of the said media and nothing else.

~~~
cannonedhamster
Internet journalism wasn't "fine". Internet journalism was subsidized by
television and advertiser ratings. Then both television and advertising
payouts took a hit leading to many newspapers, television studios, and
internet news sites to merge or die. Most "news" is basically just filler, and
with barriers to entry removed due to the internet it's easy to be ultra-local
on Facebook, faster to send news through Twitter, and real long form content
takes actual money to produce.

Many internet sites do die all the time. New ones spring up all the time, but
it seems to be the good ones that actually die and the garbage that continues
to accrue. The reason that clickbait works is because it understand human
psychology. I think that says more about humans than people realize.

~~~
pdimitar
> _Internet journalism wasn 't "fine"._

Respectfully disagree, though we most certainly have different definitions. To
me journalism does not only encompass the professional journalists but all
kinds of random people who feel the need to film something and post it in
Twitter with 2 lines of descriptive text. In that regard, and even before
Twitter was a thing, internet _always_ found a way to report things to the
population. So IMO even if most outlets go out of business, the world would
barely notice.

> _Most "news" is basically just filler_

That we fully agree on.

> _Many internet sites do die all the time. New ones spring up all the
> time..._

And this is absolutely fine. Indicates a relatively healthy system.

> _...but it seems to be the good ones that actually die and the garbage that
> continues to accrue_

Agreed as well, but IMO what we are starting to observe -- news sites getting
more and more annoying and/or using more and more obnoxious tracking in the
hopes of cashing out through selling of personal data -- is the self-
correction of the system at work. Namely natural selection. I have zero
sympathy for people who feel the need to use shady practices to survive; maybe
their business is not that valuable and they refuse to see it. That's normal,
everybody will fight for the sweet dollars -- plus the humans at large resist
change in general -- but none of us should care if it's hard for them to
survive as a business or not.

As an additional point, I don't think that most people should be paid to write
at all. As you pointed out, most writings are garbage anyway.

> _The reason that clickbait works is because it understand human psychology.
> I think that says more about humans than people realize._

Absolutely. This will not change anytime soon. Maybe centuries down the road.
The average human being is not very bright and that's the sad reality.

~~~
cannonedhamster
You know...I don't think we really disagree on most points. I really enjoy HN
for these constructive, if lively, discussions.

------
intellectronica
An inexpensive subscription to the Economist buys you not only a significant
reduction in ads but also access to tons of extra content.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
Good luck if you ever decide to unsubscribe.

~~~
smsm42
I unsubscribed just fine, no problems at all. Yes, they'd send a bunch of
letters "please, oh please, come back", but that's it.

------
tech-no-logical
it forgets to mention that ublock blocks 45 requests to 36 domains on the
initial load of that article.

------
some_account
This reminds me, have you payed your link tax yet?

[https://juliareda.eu/eu-copyright-reform/extra-copyright-
for...](https://juliareda.eu/eu-copyright-reform/extra-copyright-for-news-
sites/)

Enjoy this crappy internet, it will only get worse.

~~~
gonvaled
About time that google et al get hindered on monetizing others contributions,
and siphoning revenue out from the EU to the US.

Let's tax and fine those big, public-funded, privacy careless, tax dodging
behemonths out of existence.

The US has been treating the EU extremely unfair.

------
zerostar07
The picture does not include the allow cookies bar at the top.

------
em3rgent0rdr
uBlock Origin reports svedic.org is trying to track me with Google Analytics.
Isn't websites using Google Analytics part of the problem with the internet,
too?

------
brudgers
The internet still relies on unpurged cookies.

