4 ms·

Would be nice if you kepy ypur career and created some magazine / journal that focuses on checks and pointing out flaws. That cheaters would dread being includ

by rvba 16d ago

Would be nice if you kepy ypur career and created some magazine / journal that focuses on checks and pointing out flaws. That cheaters would dread being included there (would probably be a thick journal too)

mike_hearn 16d ago
They wouldn't dread being included there, not at all. The institutions don't care about fraud and reflexively defend it, ignore it or shoot the messenger. Look at the Arday nonsense. People are still discovering new lies he was telling but Cambridge went to the mat for him. Dan Ariely in particular has faced convincing fraud accusations for years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Ariely#Controversies_and_criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Ariely#Controversies_and_c... Nothing ever happens. Universities do not care.
- stackghost 16d ago
  The real power move would be to start targeting prospective students. Universities will start caring of enrolment goes down.
  - mike_hearn 16d ago
    They might not care even then. Journalism is an interesting case study. Their revenues went into sharp decline around the start of the century, dropping by more than 50% in some cases. Concurrently polls showed trust in journalism was plummeting, that people were tuning out because they felt that what they read wasn't reliable. Journalism didn't solve this problem by rebuilding trust and their audience. Instead they started reforming as non-profit institutions and taking huge payments from philanthropists to push specific agendas, without alerting readers to that fact. https://apnews.com/article/science-business-arts-and-entertainment-journalism-united-states-087d1d5dd7189c529fe5d7a21a1ffb5f https://apnews.com/article/science-business-arts-and-enterta... These grants aren't tied to readership but rather to the content of what's published, so they can produce lots of articles even if nobody reads them. Those articles are then used as "reliable sources" to control Wikipedia, and from there what search engines and LLMs say. If students start checking out at scale (already happening), or if governments cut funding (already happening in the USA), their most likely move is to just replace the revenue with money from the Gates Foundation et al, and keep going just as they are. Their primary role will switch from education or research to the propagation of approved narratives.
    - SmirkingRevenge 15d ago
      News reporting and journalism has always mostly been a for-profit enterprise. And no matter what business model one might choose (ads, subs, charity, etc) there will be perverse incentives working in conflict with pure truth seeking and newsworthiness. Audience capture, pleasing advertisers, the politics/interests of the owners, etc. I'm sure non-profit sponsorship has it's own issues, but I don't think those issues are particularly new or unique or transformative. The demand side is arguably the more intractable issue with journalism, since loads of people don't select for truth or importance in their news - or at least not very carefully. The institutions that seem to hold up the best are the ones with the broadest audiences. On the issue of public trust in journalism, I don't think it's actually a function of the quality or trustworthiness of journalism. I think it has more to do with the rise of radical right-wing propaganda infotainment, a core pillar of which was (and is) delegitimizing mainstream media (and academic) institutions. The mistrust was created and cultivated. Consequently, there's not much they can do to regain trust, except to work harder at discrediting the radical right-wing propaganda that has been flooding all the zones for the past several decades.
      - mike_hearn 15d ago
        I think ads were better because everyone was aware of the conflict of interest issues and took steps to manage it. They admitted it could be an issue and would have internal firewalls where ad sales weren't allowed to talk to the journalists, things like that. Advertisers accepted it because their goal wasn't to manipulate news reporting. The problem with the "philanthropic" funding is not only is there no firewall, but it's explicitly pay-to-play agenda pushing. So that culture of keeping revenue and news separated has vanished without the public being made aware of it. The right wing are saying things like, journalism is fake because they're just pushing a left wing agenda for money. That's the claim that delegitimizes journalism. But it turns out that the rightists are correct and that's exactly what journalists are doing, so it's hardly their fault that mistrust was created and cultivated. You should mistrust people who mislead you about their agenda, and if you go to the AP website today and look at some random article paid for by these grants there's no mention of where the funding comes from. Actually you get a popup begging for donations, saying that because the AP is a non-profit it's extra trustworthy. If they want to regain trust, a good start would be by refusing to accept money for stories, relabelling all the stories where they did that, and then pay for journalism purely out of subscription revenues or ads brokered through exchanges (i.e. where the advertiser doesn't have any contact with the publishers).

by rvba 16d ago

mike_hearn 16d ago

They wouldn't dread being included there, not at all. The institutions don't care about fraud and reflexively defend it, ignore it or shoot the messenger. Look at the Arday nonsense. People are still discovering new lies he was telling but Cambridge went to the mat for him. Dan Ariely in particular has faced convincing fraud accusations for years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Ariely#Controversies_and_criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Ariely#Controversies_and_c... Nothing ever happens. Universities do not care.

stackghost 16d ago
The real power move would be to start targeting prospective students. Universities will start caring of enrolment goes down.
- mike_hearn 16d ago
  They might not care even then. Journalism is an interesting case study. Their revenues went into sharp decline around the start of the century, dropping by more than 50% in some cases. Concurrently polls showed trust in journalism was plummeting, that people were tuning out because they felt that what they read wasn't reliable. Journalism didn't solve this problem by rebuilding trust and their audience. Instead they started reforming as non-profit institutions and taking huge payments from philanthropists to push specific agendas, without alerting readers to that fact. https://apnews.com/article/science-business-arts-and-entertainment-journalism-united-states-087d1d5dd7189c529fe5d7a21a1ffb5f https://apnews.com/article/science-business-arts-and-enterta... These grants aren't tied to readership but rather to the content of what's published, so they can produce lots of articles even if nobody reads them. Those articles are then used as "reliable sources" to control Wikipedia, and from there what search engines and LLMs say. If students start checking out at scale (already happening), or if governments cut funding (already happening in the USA), their most likely move is to just replace the revenue with money from the Gates Foundation et al, and keep going just as they are. Their primary role will switch from education or research to the propagation of approved narratives.
  - SmirkingRevenge 15d ago
    News reporting and journalism has always mostly been a for-profit enterprise. And no matter what business model one might choose (ads, subs, charity, etc) there will be perverse incentives working in conflict with pure truth seeking and newsworthiness. Audience capture, pleasing advertisers, the politics/interests of the owners, etc. I'm sure non-profit sponsorship has it's own issues, but I don't think those issues are particularly new or unique or transformative. The demand side is arguably the more intractable issue with journalism, since loads of people don't select for truth or importance in their news - or at least not very carefully. The institutions that seem to hold up the best are the ones with the broadest audiences. On the issue of public trust in journalism, I don't think it's actually a function of the quality or trustworthiness of journalism. I think it has more to do with the rise of radical right-wing propaganda infotainment, a core pillar of which was (and is) delegitimizing mainstream media (and academic) institutions. The mistrust was created and cultivated. Consequently, there's not much they can do to regain trust, except to work harder at discrediting the radical right-wing propaganda that has been flooding all the zones for the past several decades.
    - mike_hearn 15d ago
      I think ads were better because everyone was aware of the conflict of interest issues and took steps to manage it. They admitted it could be an issue and would have internal firewalls where ad sales weren't allowed to talk to the journalists, things like that. Advertisers accepted it because their goal wasn't to manipulate news reporting. The problem with the "philanthropic" funding is not only is there no firewall, but it's explicitly pay-to-play agenda pushing. So that culture of keeping revenue and news separated has vanished without the public being made aware of it. The right wing are saying things like, journalism is fake because they're just pushing a left wing agenda for money. That's the claim that delegitimizes journalism. But it turns out that the rightists are correct and that's exactly what journalists are doing, so it's hardly their fault that mistrust was created and cultivated. You should mistrust people who mislead you about their agenda, and if you go to the AP website today and look at some random article paid for by these grants there's no mention of where the funding comes from. Actually you get a popup begging for donations, saying that because the AP is a non-profit it's extra trustworthy. If they want to regain trust, a good start would be by refusing to accept money for stories, relabelling all the stories where they did that, and then pay for journalism purely out of subscription revenues or ads brokered through exchanges (i.e. where the advertiser doesn't have any contact with the publishers).