I started to notice some thing weird while using Reddit, every link post from Condé Nast owned news outlet was getting a high amount of upvotes and awards while other publications had a very normal rate of awards( usually zero, with the exception of the sponsored ones) and upvotes.
That when I started to investigate this matter till I found out about this.
They are boosting their publications on Reddit on the major subreddits. They are trying to give their publications a advantage over all the other news outlets.
They have the ability to kill the other news outlets if they keep doing that. Avoid them as if your freedom is dependent on it.
Wired is great
Good luck finding media now owned by some evil corporation or state.
404media is pretty solid, for what it’s worth.
Agreed. 404Media has been extremely good at covering anything from random niche communities to major data leaks. The only thing stopping me from becoming a paying member of their work is the (in my opinion, high) $100/yr price tag.
I’d also recommend following independent journalists like Ken Klippenstein. He does good work, and frequently releases documents that the rest of the media refuses to publish more than snippets of.
Why tho? What do you have against employees whose company is owned by another company whose parent company owns some other company whose executives did something you didn’t like? Your imaginary social justice mechanics really doesn’t make any fucking sense.
Ars Technica has always been very upfront about it whenever they cover news related to reddit. It’s certainly not ideal, but Ars Technica remains a very good website for tech news
Ars Technica is generally excellent in my experience, one of the better tech news websites.
Long live Beth Mole for health news!
She’s awesome. I love Eric Berger’s contributions too.
Eric Berger is an elon-boi tho
Appreciating Space X accomplishments does not make you an Elon boi.
Half his gig is space and is he supposed to leave Space X out of his articles?
He talked about the Longmarch as well. I guess that makes him a terrible Chinese apologist.
His tone for Space X failures does not match the tone he uses for <insert company name> failures. He is so quick to forgive Space X when things are absolutely abysmal.
His tone for Space X accomplishments does not match the tone for <insert company name> accomplishments. He will praise and praise Space X when things go right, wont give the other companies the same attention when they succeed.
Its a clear bias, and its sad that he has been able to dedicate so much time doing this without people realizing it.
He’s certainly a SpaceX fan, which I think is a lot more defensible than being a Musk fan
Listen, I hate that fucking South African douchebag as much as the next guy, but Space X has fucking dominated the space race. No one even comes close to them.
They turned the industry upside down, and have more launches then the rest of the world combined. In fact it’s not even close.
That you can’t separate the success of Space X from Musk, is a you problem.
Sure it sucks that he benefits from their success, but also, no one believes that Musk has anything to do with their successes either.
The repeated failures of Starship is surprising but if you can’t appreciate what a phenomenal achievement the landing of the super heavy was, then you don’t really understand the industry enough to be commenting on it.
And punny titles!
what are some other good ones?
TechDirt for stuff that has more to do with the legal side, rather than technical news
TheRegister for general computer news with a dash of bri’ish sarcasm
Agreed. As long as their corporate overlords do not fuck up Ars, there is no reason to avoid them.
If (when ?) it becomes an AI slop-filled shell of its former self, then it will be past time to go elsewhere.
Yup, as long as the current staff (by and large) are still at the helm of the Ars orbiting HQ, I’ll continue to go there. I’ve lost too many other good tech news sites in the last decade, I can’t lose another one.
The rest of Conde Nast is hot garbage.
It’s great on politics too, they post things other outlets won’t.
They have very blunt takes at the space launch industry, for one.
but Ars Technica remains a very good website for tech news
This thread imply they are not a very good website for tech news.
Somehow, they actually are a good source for political news. The tech press (them and Wired) have been some of the best at covering the second Trump Admin. Possibly because it’s crawling in tech bros, and the tech press already knows how to deal with them.
Somehow, they actually are a good source for political news.
This thread imply they are not a very good website for tech news and neither political.
And the thread is wrong about one of those. I rarely touch them for tech news.
Yeah, the conde owner bit isn’t news to anyone, just cause this one guy never looked. Are is fine and it will be as long as the current people are there. Until it gets looted and the staff laid off it is fine. Eric Berger navigates a bit of a tightrope because he has high level access to Musk but can’t be too direct about asking anything other than rockets, even though the political part is affecting the space part a lot right now. I do expect that just like Polygon it will eventually be gutted but nothing lasts forever.
…unfortunately they’re rife with oppressively disruptive advertising these days; just not worth reading anymore and my battery life agrees…
You’re online without ad blockers?
…yeppers; don’t use a computer…
Did you know you can install adblockers on phone browsers? Because you can, and you should
…i did not but i’d rather not traffic user-hostile sites, regardless…
While I sort of agree. I’m just gonna say, you ain’t gonna find anything mainstream western media that doesn’t have major ties to unethical corpos unless you basically force yourself to only use AP and the Guardian (and even then, pretty sure they still have dodgy ties, just it’s not as visible since no direct “ownership”.)
404media.co is pretty (really) good.
Propublica is an excellent nonprofit investigative journalism organization. They have a strong track record of holding powerful companies accountable and achieving real world results/consequences. They often partner with local news organizations to help give them good content and there’s never a paywall either.
Yes propublica is amazing. But I wouldn’t necessarily call them mainstream. They are mainstream amongst journalists, nerds, and leftists. But not really apart from that.
Right, I try to spread the word :)
I’m a big NPR/PBS guy, independent media is always worthwhile.
But that has direct ties to the US government. (And as we’ve seen under Trump), those ties can be abused.
So I agree they are good services. But IMO they still have dodgy ties.
What time is the government does npr/pbs have? Please tell me your talking about something other than the grant money they receive
(And as we’ve seen under Trump), those ties can be abused.
You mean because the holder of the highest position in government is upset about the exercise of free speech by PBS and NPR?
Those ties that we have seen where the government is trying - and so far failing - to crush those outlets for dissent, and are actively being sued for it? That abuse?
no ethical consumption under capitalism…
You could just avoid corporate media. There’s loads of great independent journalism in the West.
Consider The Guardian’s campaign against Jeremy Corbyn as an anti-Semite. Or their many character assassination pieces against Julian Assange. These campaigns serve the interests of the Zionist lobby and the US empire, respectively.
If you are critical of modern imperialism and capitalism, then The Guardian and AP do not have good takes on many issues. Currently, The Guardian publishes articles critical of the genocide in Gaza, which is the only correct position to take on the issue. However they have served Zionist interests in the past and carried water for US warmongers.
While they get on the bandwagon when critical mass gets unstoppable they also manufacture consent for empire.
The Guardian publishes articles critical of the genocide in Gaza, which is the only correct position to take on the issue. However they have served Zionist interests in the past and carried water for US warmongers.
You can be independent and still carry interests of Zionistd and US warmongers, both knowingly and unknowingly. You have every right to be skeptical because of previous publications and also every right to share that here, not trying to argue there, but there is no such things as always having the correct position. Every media outlet will at some point publish something questionable. My point being, you should never swallow news as a definite truth also when you’re trusting a certain source in general.
That’s a good point. I totally agree. Every news source has its biases.
The scary thing is getting hundreds of millions of people to believe Western news delivers the truth, while non Western news delivers the lies.
Also I don’t believe there is a single correct position on every issue. But on genocide there is a basic take: stop it immediately.
While I sort of agree. I’m just gonna say, you ain’t gonna find anything mainstream western media that doesn’t have major ties to unethical corpos unless you basically force yourself to only use AP and the Guardian (and even then, pretty sure they still have dodgy ties, just it’s not as visible since no direct “ownership”.)
They are two examples of more believable / trustworthy western news outlets, I don’t think anyone in this thread is anywhere close to implying all western news is true or that all non-western news is false.
Concerning genocide, almost everybody on earth agrees the only sensible thing is to stop it; that’s why most pro-Israeli news act as if there is no genocide happening there. I think they are wrong, Israel is committing genocide.
I don’t think anyone in this thread is anywhere close to implying all western news is true or that all non-western news is false.
Yes, I agree. But it’s a common belief in the West that Russian and Chinese news, for example, are pure propaganda. The irony is that this belief is itself the result of propaganda.
That’s mostly because the trustworthy news outlet from those countries don’t publish in English whereas the propaganda is. But you’re right people don’t think there is independent journalism in Russia and China. That is not so much an east/west axis but a capitalist democracy / Communist authoritarianism axis.
I read independent journalism from China. It’s called Ginger River Review if you’re interested.
Independent news media was almost totally killed off in the US and Canada with the media mergers. Good thing Substack and for a while Medium, also YouTube, and just independent websites popped up. Of course YouTube is owned by Google and the reporting on it reflects their censorship.
As for authoritarian, that’s a core part of the propaganda campaign developed by NATO / The Atlantic Council to deal with states that don’t bend the knee to US empire. It’s a smear that distorts what is happening in The West (increasing authoritarianism) and in China (improving quality of life).
Isn’t it funny how theres always a company that nobody has ever heard of behind every big brand that everybody knows about?Containerised liability assigned to nonexistent entities.
Conde Nast was a big name in the magazine publishing business for decades.
But not for laymen.
But for laywomen 🤣!
This is how the USA works now. Not just unethical companies and monopolies but super monopolies and upright evil companies. If you ever want to make yourself mad Google EssilorLuxottica, it is the largest eyeglass manufacturer, sunglass manufacturer, eyeglass retailer … and believe it or not it also owns Eyemed eye insurance. It’s not the biggest eye insurance company … yet.
Vertical integration that leads to self dealing like this should be considered anti competitive and illegal.
Unfortunately in US healthcare it’s the norm.
companies shouldn’t have limits on how far they can grow, and vertical integration is almost impossible to regulate as it’s just manufacturing a product from start to finish.
Monopolies aren’t your friend.
The US does operate on the principle that companies should actually have limits on how far they can grow. This was set forth in the Sherman Act of 1890. The fact that it was not there at the founding of the country, embedded in the constitution, is probably a contributing factor on why the US is falling into corruption today. The main cause is of course political parties, which should have been made illegal. George Washington predicted our current future in his exit speech when he said that political parties would be the downfall of the US … he was right.
The same company manufacturing eyeglasses and providing vision insurance isn’t “start to finish” manufacturing.
It’s the same concept as car dealerships having loans and being owned (or franchise things) by the car company.
No, it’s not, and that still isn’t what you said, which was “start to finish” manufacturing.
Car dealerships financing a loan is literally just selling you a car on credit. You still have full choice there, and can mix and match your source of car and your source of finance at will. You can get a loan from any bank to buy a car from any dealership.
A vision insurance company limits the manufacturers you can buy from, and is almost exclusively sold as a bundle with employer provided health insurance. You don’t have nearly the same ability to choose the source of your insurance or the manufacturer of your glasses, and they literally decide what price you’re allowed to pay, there is no negotiation.
Containerised liability assigned to nonexistent entities.
That is how corporations avoid antitrust lawsuits. They know what they’re doing.
Heck the name of the brand doesn’t have to be the same as the name of the company.
It is also standard practise to do in basically every country. It helps with liability, but it also helps when you want to sell parts of the company and can help for tax reasons as well.
I have seen companies with similar structures who only have a couple of hundred thousand euro of revenue.
I remember in geography learning that Merlin entertainment is behind a lot of our major theme parks. Yeah it’s a thing
I frankly don’t know how you have lived this long and not heard of them. This is more of you problem versus everybody else problem.
This had pretty wide awareness during the reddit api Crack down and even before that when Chinese tencent bought a stake in reddit. A lot of the reddit users from that time are aware. I would argue tencent is much much worse than Conde nast
They are both threat actors from a peasant’s perspective
Interesting fact: when lowtax was forced to sell somethingawful to one of his moderators that got bitcoin rich for 400k he revealed during the negotiations that conde nast attempted to buy somethingawful for 13 million dollars around 2006 or so. He turned them down because he “was still having fun with the site”
After the sale was completed the mod looked into it a bit more and realized in that same timeframe conde nast ended up purchasing a majority stake in reddit for a very similar amount
Imagine how different the internet would be if “the front page of the internet” was a hacked up vbulletin site from 2003 filled with 40 year old IT dorks and run by a guy that was so afraid of paying child support that he literally killed himself
Conde Nast didn’t make Reddit the front page of the Internet, the community did
run by a guy that was so afraid of paying child support that he literally killed himself
Where can I read more about that?
There are some articles about his death linked on Wikipedia but they’re pretty just-the-facts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Kyanka
I was having a hard time imagining a worse reality than this one, thank you.
Sadge, Ars Technica 😢
When I hear “Conde Nast” I think about that scandal with the Bon Appetit Youtube channel and how they were discriminating against their non-white chefs.
https://www.thewrap.com/bon-appetit-adam-rapoport-brownface/
They are in turn owned by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance_Publications, even larger than Conde Nast.
It’s a holding company that owns conde nasty and the local paper, on Staten Island. It’s not a conspiracy. It’s a wealthy conservative publishing company.
“You don’t need a formal conspriacy when their interests converge.” “It’s a big club, and you’re not in it”
- George Carlin
That being said, very likely that - like Xitter - they intentionally amplify activity that benefits their interests. We know for a fact that Reddit was founded on astroturf.
The list of who not to avoid I think is much shorter.
Here it is.
List of Who Not to Avoid:
The Onion?
Well they have become less satirical than reality so…now I don’t know what to do.
404media?
Haven’t they owned Reddit for 20 years now?
I wondered the same thing. Seems we’re getting older than the median age on here. Lol
Why am I not surprised? I stopped having any trust in that platform when they killed 3rd party clients. I would suggest everyone to leave reddit and watch it implode from afar.
Yes, it stings. It’s a habit. You still have nice subs in there, communities that make you happy. But you’re fiddling as the ship sinks. That’s the metaphor, isn’t it?
Giving up hundreds of thousands of co-users for a few thousand is a helluva drug.
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