
Medium and Twitter founder: ‘We put junk food in front of them and they eat it’ - ALee
http://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/apr/10/twitter-ev-williams-medium-content-fast-food
======
natrius
Advertising as a business model is destroying the things we love. Nobody wants
addictive content. We want informative, enjoyable content, but that's not
profitable. Page views are profitable, and page views require addiction.

Turn on your ad blockers. Destroy addiction as a business model. The only
content that will remain will be subscription-based, commissioned by crowds or
individuals, or written for free. It will be better.

~~~
brador
Naivity. The ads will be hidden in the content and articles/videos will be
paid for by advertisers to shill their products with subtle mentions.
Everything will be a PR piece, and you can't block that without blocking the
content.

~~~
username223
We seem to have reached a bearable truce with spam. I think well north of 90%
of email people try to send is spam nowadays, but no more than 50% of what I
actually see on any given day is PR junk, unsolicited or otherwise. Granted,
messages I care about sometimes get lost, but it doesn't happen often enough
to make email useless. ML-based "native advertising" blockers will eventually
become as common as spam filters, and the war will become a slightly
unpleasant stalemate. Maybe the end-state will be something like current
product placement in movies and TV, which is usually either comically heavy-
handed, or completely unobtrusive and ignorable.

~~~
esolyt
But PR pieces are not exactly spam.

You might block "27 Thoughtful Wedding Gifts" because it has product links,
but there is chance some of those links would actually be useful to people
looking for wedding gifts.

Such a blocker would have to block the entire Buzzfeed, for instance.

~~~
takno
I'm pretty relaxed about that

~~~
cfarre
Me too!

------
kough
This is a submarine piece for Medium, but I found this paragraph to be
poignant:

“I’ve been working on publishing systems on the internet for my entire career,
which is coming up on 20 years now,” says Williams. “When I stepped back from
operations at Twitter, I thought, OK, what’s next? There was no longer this
need to make it easy. We’d checked that box. It’s easy to create a website.
It’s even easier to send a tweet. But it turns out it wasn’t the case that
more information would automatically make us all smarter as individuals or as
a society. There was still something missing and broken with the system we’re
relying on to get our information, that told us how to understand the world.”

It's easy to agree with this based on the media we encounter today, but this
state is not an obvious result of the introduction of the internet. The
network has changed our culture, and continues to change our culture, in ways
that we don't yet fully understand.

~~~
roymurdock
Someone should make a plugin that counts the number of times a brand is
mentioned in an "article" and uses ML/crowdsources votes to show a "sponsored
content" or "submarine" score. Even if there is some interesting point to be
made, I hate being manipulated into reading longform ads.

~~~
dcposch
What does "submarine" mean here? It must be a pretty unusual term because even
Googling "submarine sponsored content" doesnt work

~~~
prawn
It's just content that exists at the prodding of a PR company on behalf of
their client. Once you've worked with and around PR people, you start to
recognise it in the wild even when it's subtle. It's not always a direct angle
but could be things to build the brand of key personalities like "Running a
business with small children" where the business owner is profiled, or
"Staying healthy at the office" where the business owner talks about what they
eat and drink.

A significant portion of print (and now online) pieces would be as a result of
professional PR efforts.

(My wife works in PR and I used to share an office with another PR company.)

------
dredmorbius
Information goods and markets are a poor match for numerous reasons.
Paradoxically, it also seems to be the direction much of the advanced world is
headed, in the sense both of goods which are nothing but information (data,
print, audio, images, video), and those for which information content is a
large component: high-tech manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, and processes.

One of the problems is fairly well understood: the tendency for marginal costs
to approach zero, or at least a small fraction of the _fixed_ costs of
production (look at the story over how Boeing accounts for the R&D of its 787
Dreamliner).

Another is more insidious: _information isn 't readily assimilarted_. If you
look at the advertiser's toolkit for message dissemination, what you see are
all kinds of ways to drape the _intended_ message over an _assimilable_ one:
sex, youth, beauty, fame, fear, greed, jealousy, envy, loss. Or repetition,
music, disorientation, flashy elements.

Junk food (of the dietary or infotainment variety) has _cognizability_ , a
word I first ran across in William Stanley Jevons description of
characteristics of money. You instantly recognise _what these are_. Complex
truths are, well, _more complicated_. The geniuses who discover or explain
them _come up with useful metaphors or analogies_ : Newton, Darwin, Einstein,
Feynman. Much of that is mapping a _novel_ thought onto a _familiar_ one.

We're not going to take that out of information, it's part and parcel of the
bargain (a metaphor, incidentally, arguably a cliche). But we _can_ try
engineering systems for compensating and promoting information which _don 't_
flagrantly flog and feed _junk_. That's the feedback and control loops
Williams talks of.

One approach is to treat information as a public good. It's what the UK does
with the BBC, and it's the philosophy of a number of institutions, including
CUNY's Graduate Center (who've adopted this as their motto), and Robert
McChesney and John Nichols:

[http://www.thenation.com/article/how-save-
journalism-0/](http://www.thenation.com/article/how-save-journalism-0/)

~~~
surfaceTensi0n
In advertising there is a concept called effective frequency which is,
essentially, how many times someone needs to be exposed to your ad before they
make a purchase. This is tied pretty directly to the complexity of your
message. The more complex your message, the higher the effective frequency and
the more times people need to be exposed to your ad before they buy your
product. Hence the tendency towards easily assimilated ideas like you mention.

~~~
dredmorbius
I'm starting to think I need to look at advertising theory some more. Ugh.

Thanks for the comment though, pretty much as I'd suspected.

Another note: if the frequency is too _high_ in any one period of time, I
suspect there's burnout. Political advertising seems to hit this point -- a
friend in a heavily campaigned state a few years back used to respond to
candidate spots with "F--- you <name>" when yet another of the multiple-times-
an-hour ads would sound.

You need repetitions, but also spacing.

There's also ... I forget the name, but "Pass the Biscuits, Pappy", a 1930s /
1940s Texas politician. Ended up governor, before getting caught up in a
corruption scandal. Early name recognition came from his fame as a bluegrass /
popular music performer.

~~~
soared
You are bordering on some basic advertising theory! Seeing an ad too often has
a negative effect. So depending on your industry, you advertise with different
strategies. My favorite example is beer. They advertise year round, but pretty
low key. You'll see maybe one or two beer ads a week. But when certain events
occur (superbowl, spring break, holidays, etc) they ramp up advertising and
you'll see two to three a day.

Its different for each industry though, some do 90% of spend for the holidays.

------
mbesto
> _“Medium doesn’t need to be the thing you check all day, every day. We’re
> not looking for addiction,” says Williams. “We’re just looking to give
> people one or two of what they think are the most important things on a
> daily basis. Things that they care about, things that change how they think
> about the world.”_

With a business model exactly like BuzzFeed's, which is built on optimizing
for content and titles that can be turned in native advertising. It's not
changing the way how we think about the world...it's the changing the way we
think about how advertisers want the world to look like.

~~~
briholt
It doesn't take a PhD in data analytics to figure out that profit-motive will
create a ceaseless pressure for page views, which means Medium will inevitably
try to get people to spend all day everyday on Medium. Which means their
unavoidable path is to become BuzzFeed.

------
Kenji
The problem is that most of news in itself is and always will be junk.
Profound messages do not owe their value to novelty. If you take the time to
read the newspaper and instead read a book about, I don't know, calculus,
every day, you will lean much, much more.

~~~
matt4077
News are, however, the source from which most 'profound messages' are
distilled. While it doesn't really hurt a single individual to stop reading
the news, if large parts of society do so, democracy no longer has the
substance it needs to operate.

Also: judging by the amount self-righteousness in this thread, HN readers
would never consume 'fast-food-content', read 'a calculus book per day' and
see through all the marketing spin. All while compulsively reloading HN,
probably.

~~~
Kenji
Hah, my bad, I worded that poorly. I didn't mean an entire calculus book per
day. That would be absolute madness (well, at least if you calculate along
with all the proofs). I mean a few pages of a calculus book every day instead
of a few pages of newspaper ;)

And I read hackernews not because of the news articles but because of the
value of the hackernews comments, though I agree, it is somewhat hypocritical,
I also read the news sometimes.

~~~
matt4077
I know – sorry for making fun of that wording. Comment threads like this just
get the worst of me. Having worked in journalism, I don't quite understand the
disregard (hate?) for the profession, esp. considering how reasonable HN
usually seems to be.

~~~
Kenji
No problem. I don't hate journalism. Contrary to the second part of my
original comment, I actually worded the first part quite carefully, take note
of the word 'most' and that I do not say that news cannot be profound.

I don't disregard journalism, there are some journalists who I hold in very
high esteem. The problem is a classic one: Journalists have a job to write up
things. They seek out information and make an article out of it. This is very
difficult to do right since most interesting articles emerge from an inverse
process: That the writer learned or acquired valuable information first and
later feels the need to share it. This kind of writing has a higher
probability to contain anything of value.

------
amagumori
oh man, the way they spun his quote in the title for outrage clicks...

~~~
ced
_We’re still stuck in some very naive thinking, with the idea that people
consuming media means that’s what they want – it’s like, well, we put junk
food in front of them and they ate that, so that must be what they want.”_

Really disappointing from the Guardian.

~~~
elcapitan
It's almost ironic to spin a quote in such a way to attract clicks on an
article about how the media put junk in front of their consumers.

------
vanderZwan
Kind of funny how he talks about _content_ in terms of calories and junk food
(and he's absolutely spot on, of course), and how Medium.com is one of the
leaders in _website_ obesity, which is "fat" on the technical layer:

[http://idlewords.com/talks/website_obesity.htm](http://idlewords.com/talks/website_obesity.htm)

(not meant a snide remark, just thought it was an interesting coincidence in
choice of metaphor)

------
codeulike
The clickbait quote in context:

"We’re still stuck in some very naive thinking, with the idea that people
consuming media means that’s what they want – it’s like, well, we put junk
food in front of them and they ate that, so that must be what they want.”

------
brento
Reading the comments in this thread, is somewhat ironic.

------
eveningcoffee
This quote is completely wrong!

He told: ", well, we put junk food in front of them and they ate that, so that
must be what they want.”.

------
sekasi
I don't quite understand the reasoning in the start which seems to boil down
to;

Content/Media on the web is bad and people are dissatisfied.

How exactly do you reach this conclusion? I mean we can all make huge
assumptions about the opinions the average human have on the quality of media,
but I don't think that qualifies as any form of factual commentary.

~~~
onewaystreet
> How exactly do you reach this conclusion

Ev was the founder of Blogger, co-founder of Twitter and now is the founder of
Medium. If he's reached the conclusion that people are dissatisfied with
content/media on the web it's probably because a lot of them have told him so
(it's still just his opinion though, doesn't mean he's right).

~~~
Animats
So he did Twitter.com (small), and Medium.com What next, Large.com? The domain
is for sale.

------
hiou
Social Media sites like Twitter and Facebook have been shown to be addictive.

Junk food like McDonald's and Snickers bars have been shown to be addictive.

They are all the same type of product. It's amazing to see those involved in
tech attempt over and over again to rationalize themselves out of that obvious
connection.

~~~
beezle
its funny reading him moan about it. the internet was already a difficult
place for written word as the attention spans necessary for more than a
page/screen are just not there. Then came twitter. Will it be long now before
tweets come with tl;dr ?

~~~
Retra
Are you imagining a site that forces communication through emoji and nothing
else?

------
rayalez
One of the major reasons so much online content is junk is advertisements.
When journalists make money based on clicks, they have very strong incentives
to produce a lot low quality, easy to consume content. When you profit from
manipulating attention, it's hard to resist generating clickbait. It is much
easier to manufacture outrage(that spreads very well) than to educate or
enlighten.

I think that the best way to fix this is to change monetization strategy from
ads to premium content or paid subscriptions. When that happens, the main
incentive turns from "quickly produce a lot of viral content" to "create high
quality content that is worth buying". It is the easiest, the most
straightforward way to properly align incentives.

I was so excited about Medium because it's a platform that had a chance to do
that, and I hoped they would. Unfortunately, they have introduced ads as a
monetization strategy. Too bad.

------
ubersol1
In my humble opinion both platforms are turning into a place where people
would like to complain or bitch about some things that bother them.

------
jplasmeier
Well, what do you want for free _?

_ "ad-supported"

~~~
rhizome
"We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas"

------
danr4
The future of information is NOT in for-profit organizations.

------
foobarqux
Is the hype for Medium legitimate? Why?

~~~
AdamSC1
Yes and no.

First every new social and/or blogging platform is praised as some deity that
will unlock the path to fame, fortune and a life time supply of cheese puffs,
and so the hype should be taken with a very large grain of salt.

That said Medium is a solid platform that has a few advantages:

1) It's got a great asethic both for readers and writers. It's clean, flows
nicely and that holds true cross device.

2) It's managed by someone else. As a writer you don't need to worry about
plugins, updates, themes, etc. You just write.

3) It's managed by someone else. As a reader you don't need to worry about
malicious code, horrible pop-unders or aggressive ads.

4) The fact that it is a joint marketplace for publishers and supports
curration supports sharing quality pieces regardless of the publisher and so
for someone who otherwise would spend a lot of time trying to seed and promote
their own blog content, they can focus on writing. While there still needs to
be some promotion, a really well written piece on Medium can carry further.

That said it has it's downsides. While the piece may carry further, the impact
may be less than your own blog where you may amass a following. You as an
author can't really monetize the content on that platform as easily nor does
it have flexibility if you want to show case something in a particular style,
or with plugins/features not natively supported by Medium.

Medium is like any other well-designed platform. It has it's specific use-
cases which it does a great job at. But it will not give you unlimited cheese
puffs.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
Can you monetise the content at all? I assumed Medium was the ultimate "Do it
for exposure!" content factory - with the difference that unlike most, you can
get some useful exposure from it, maybe.

Update: so there's a monetisation API on the way. So - we'll see how those
cheese puffs work out.

~~~
AdamSC1
Yeah - they've experimented with multiple monetization models over the past
year or so. Now there is a beta for a select group of users. I for one really
hope they nail it, but I'm not sure it's on the right path yet.

The challenge is that the platform of curation of interesting content for the
sake of interesting content, stops working when it becomes the curation of
interesting content for profit. As unless you do it based on customer
satisfaction in microtransactions (oh I like your content have a cheese puff),
then it's based on views or clicks.

Thus begins their decent into clickbait land where everyone gets cheesits (the
crunchier, lamer and more disappointing brother of the cheese puff).

You earn low volumes of cash as you don't have a loyal readership. I earn
disappointment as your title was misleading, and we both go home and cry in
the fetal position at what the internet has become.

So, once again, hopefully they nail it - because right now they're pretty
dandy.

------
arisAlexis
Not meant as an ad since I am fighting alone for a non-profit but checkout
something that is meant as a free no-bs replacement of Twitter (maybe Medium
too)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11456660](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11456660)

~~~
arisAlexis
I have coded 6 months for some good cause without money and still get
downvoted :) oh well

