Eniko (moved ➡ gamedev.place)Reminder that fascists believe whatever is convenient for their goals at the time and are utterly unbothered by people pointing out inconsistencies or hypocrisy in their actions, statements, policies, or ideology
JW prince of CPH@eniko Exactly. One of the reasons it's going so well for them is that even the parts of the press that aren't bought & muzzled by some fascist-happy billionaire are still full of journalists who apparently learned in journo school that digging for - or even outright fabricating - politician inconsistencies is the entire job...
LiteralGrill@literalgrill @eniko "People will only read lies & nonsense" is, to put it plainly, a bullshit excuse, which the press has used for literally generations when justifying not doing their actual 4th Estate job. It just isn't true that people don't read the "tougher" content - but even when people read it, it's less profitable in terms of ad revenue than clickbait, so... a business decision is made to chip away at the foundations of civilization for the immediate bottom line.
@jwcph @eniko Okay yes, people do literally read them, but it is literally 100 to 20,000+ difference in clicks between the garbage and good stuff. I literally get to see the numbers for the job.
I just want to make it clear I absolutely agree with you that doing things this way is horrendous. Suggesting things are done differently just tends to get people fired.
I don't know how to fix this problem outside of honestly no longer having capitalism in any capacity. Until then, folks who need food on their tables, especially disabled and marginalized people in most of these low paying writing jobs because they can't do much else are trapped to keep making it worse. When freelancers have to put out countless articles a day just to barely get by they're going to take the easy route every time and I get why. They don't want to end up homeless.
That or perhaps we need to make some laws regulating these things again like we used to have in the US again. I would welcome that with open arms.
@literalgrill @eniko I know people have to eat, and while I did blame journos in my original post (for not understanding the point Eniko made) I don't blame them for the business bullshit - that's a systemic problem.
The good news is, we don't need to dismantle *all* of capitalism to make it better; just dropping surveillance capitalism would take down the entire digital ad market rigamarole. Remember, well over 90% of those clicks are fraudulent; this isn't about advertising to begin with.
@jwcph @eniko Oh gosh yeah it's very true. And some clicks "aren't as good as others." Even if sometimes an honestly amazing piece goes out that's well researched and hard hitting, tons of people read it, even if it isn't just aggregated right for ads these bosses get mad.
It's baffling beyond all reason. It's not why I joined the profession and there are people trying to push back. Just hoping the big freelance writing union I keep hearing rumblings about comes to fruition.