JubilantJaguar @ JubilantJaguar @lemmy.world

European. Contrarian liberal. Insufferable green. History graduate. **I nev

---

Read more

Posts

12

Comments

1,484

Joined

2 yr. ago

The BBC has always been under heavy criticism for bias, it's inevitable given its role. But the point is that the bias is not structural: its journalists are not worried about losing their jobs if they offend the government or a billionaire owner. The BBC's bias is the sum of the biases of the journalists, who tend to come from a certain section of society and see the world in certain predictable way. It's quite hard to address that.

A paywall for journalism is just as legitimate as a paywall for any other kind of product or service that costs money to produce.

Suggested compromise: keep the original link (this helps the publisher) and include a relevant excerpt from the paywalled article - not the whole article, but enough to allow an informed discussion on it. Encourage readers to subscribe if they can afford it. Most publishers will be happy with that.

This is called a "velvet rope paywall". The idea is to keep the content open to indexing while strongly encouraging human readers to cough up. It's a decent idea IMO, as are (easily subverted) metered paywalls.

Vouchers, basically, as some countries (Sweden is one) do for schools. A pretty good idea IMO.

Sure. But apparently subtle differences are in fact important. For example, RAI, the Italian broadcaster, is traditionally kept on a tight leash by the government, and everyone in Italy understands that. The BBC by contrast is almost completely independent due to its unusual setup involving a charter. PBS is partly accountable to its audience directly because it begs them for donations. Russian state TV is obviously just the propaganda arm of the Kremlin. Where the money comes from is important but it doesn't tell the whole story.

Thank you. It really bothers me that there are so many people who expect journalism to fall from trees, or even that they're somehow owed it.

The situation for the last 20 years - the internet free-for-all with plunging ad revenues and spotty quality - is a historic anomaly. Before that it was normal to pay for journalism, and masses of people did. Seems we're slowly moving back to that model and it's not a moment too soon.

That said, there have always been free sources of non-billionaire-controlled news in the form of state broadcasters like PBS, BBC, CBC. In mainland Europe there are several that publish in English, including DW, France24, Der Spiegel. They have their biases, of course, but they employ professional journalists who take their jobs seriously. And there are more and more nonprofit publishers too: ProPublica and The Guardian spring to mind but there are a ton of specialist outlets too, financed by readers or philanthropic foundations.

People? A few centuries from now?

This is how I see it too. It's why I use Telegram (which I know is dodgy) but not Whatsapp.

Variants of this exact question seem to be asked at the rate of about 3 per week.

Final proof that AI is labor-saving.

OK yes that is indeed odd. Apparently Morocco is aspirationally European.

That's because the other one sees itself as an island in the middle of the Atlantic.

I'm thinking there might be an Easter egg buried deep inside one of the paragraphs but I can't quite find the courage to look.

Seconded. OP may exaggerate the problem a little, but the hypersensitivity is real.

For another anecdatapoint, last year I had a unpleasant experience on a mainstream Feddit community after I suggested (very politely) that it was silly to label millions of people in Eastern Europe as "fascists" simply because some rightwing populists did well in an election. My comment got deleted along with a couple of others that were even more anodyne. I complained to the mod in private about the obvious thought-policing, and for my trouble got banned on grounds of "racism". It was a completely surreal experience and made me question what I was doing here at all.

And of course I know already that some of you here are going to prejudge my intentions just as the mod did. No smoke without fire, right? Banned for racism! Obviously I must have been trying to propagate harmful and pernicious ideas! But no, I really wasn't. I'm basically a liberal, I tend to vote green. I just enjoy debates, and ideas, and free exchange. Glancing over the comments here, I see that there are already several others who clearly do not enjoy those things, who don't appreciate having their opinions questioned by others. I agree with OP that this is a problem.

A surprisingly clear and informative article, perhaps because it uses details exclusively obtained from the Commission.

Obviously nobody here bothered to read it but they should do.

Same situation. But notifications is pretty easy to solve. Just set them to go to some private email.

As for accessing the app privately, also easy enough: don't use the app, use the web interface on a private browser profile.

That's not possible on mobile without user-agent spoofing the browser to make it appear like a desktop. But then if it's only messages "every now and then", that should not be problem. Just keep to desktop, your quality of life has improved already! That is just my own experience, of course.

Sure, I understand the arguments. I've had this debate plenty of times, virtually and in person. I've even lost a couple of friends over it. Some people see things my way, some people see things yours. Your way is in the ascendant, it's undeniable. But you must know that there are other ways of interpreting the same facts, that people - yes, even good people - have different values to you. For me you are selling a creed of victimhood, of fragility, of hypersensitivity, in which people are incentivized to find offense, where everyone comes out a loser. Again: you seem to be a decent well-meaning person, you're not throwing insults around like others here, and I hear the points you make. I'm sure you're intelligent and I completely respect you. But I fundamentally disagree with your analysis. Good night.

This, again, is my point. A puerile ethnic slur (I didn't read it closely but I think that's what it was) by provocateur spammers is cause for a big song and dance of solemn apologies and ostentatious contrition. But your personal insult lobbed against me is apparently fine. This is the modern value system that I don't understand and don't want to be part of, personally.

But you know nothing about how privileged or not I am.

At heart, liberalism just means putting the individual before the collective. So there can be lots of varieties of liberal. But a debate on terminology will quickly get quite boring. From what I can tell, this community is hardly even liberal, let alone neoliberal. That was my point. It seems that people are seeing in others the ideologies they want to see.