Chris MessinaThe reality of Kevin Systrom's Artifact is coming into focus now that you can follow writers on the platform.
This will become a direct competitor to Substack and Medium, and maybe even outlets like the NYT.
davidj@chrismessina @Techmeme I really hope it’s successful enough to stick around long term. It’s quickly become of my favorite ways to read the news.
Aurelius Publius@chrismessina @Techmeme I installed it not thinking much of it, but it's quickly become something I value for daily news. It's seriously good.
Ernie Smith@chrismessina @Techmeme That's interesting. Guess I gotta claim my profile.
Bob StarrEdit: What I said below is incorrect. I double-checked and no contacts access was found. Apologies for the misinformation. (Keeping this comment as not to break the thread.)
I really wanted to use Artifact but when it required contacts access that was a dealbreaker for me. Otherwise the app looked great!
@bobstarr is it not possible to not give access? I almost never give access to my contacts.
@chrismessina let me re-download it and check. There didn't seem be, but now I'm curios.
@chrismessina Well it seems that prompt doesn't come up and when I check in the app contacts are disabled. It just didn't seem obvious that happened upon first use. Thanks for questioning my comment and making me check. Will start using this again.
@bobstarr Good to hear! Enjoy!
Andre Moore@chrismessina @Techmeme I didn’t think much of it when it was first release but the social features have really shifted my thinking. Very curious to see how things evolve.
I’m particularly interested in the idea that they can enable commenting across different article but merge into one topic thread. Makes it more like Reddit in that sense.
Colin Devroe@chrismessina the “claim your profile” approach has been tried before. Remember Get Satisfaction? Do you think writers will want to jump in here?
@chrismessina I’ll check it out. Do you find yourself using the app?
Marcello Bastéa-Forte@chrismessina the main reason I can’t use it for long is lack of adblock. Most sites it loads are completely unreadable
@marcello3d I almost always use Reader Mode and their AI summarization to avoid that problem.
@chrismessina ya ditto but feels broken that you have to every time
@marcello3d I don't disagree but Systrom said that that experience is what allows publishers to publish their content "for free", so won't automatically enable adblocking.
Artifact's support for signing in to paywalled services is helpful.
@chrismessina for sure. feels like there’s a mismatch. clearly the publishers want me to look at the unreadable website, I’m clued in enough to know I can bypass it but they’re betting on most people not or not caring. I’d rather just pay and not deal with it, but I can’t realistically do that separately for every single publisher, so I don’t know what the solution is (mine is I forget to open artifact and just use a web browser)
@marcello3d Right. Well, this is the "subscription overload" concern.
Most publishers throw loads of ads on their websites because the content is really for the machines — search engines. And because most people still browse/access the web signed out, you're right that those are the folks who "pay" (in their attention) to subsidize your access.
It's a gnarly problem.
re_chief@chrismessina @Techmeme Artifact has mostly served to remind me of how obnoxious ads on mobile news sites are. I love the service; the problem is that once you leave Artifact to read the articles on the linked sites, half your phone’s screen is taken up by mobile ads