Post: #1

Came across this video today:





It mentions something I've not heard of before, but long suspected - that the mainstream media manipulate web traffic reporting services to make themselves appear bigger and get more advertising and investment. In the video it's presented that Vice fakes half of it's traffic.

There are a number of services like Quantcast that show sites with very high traffic; and I can't imagine them with that much traffic. Are Yelp and Buzzfeed really two of the most popular sites in the US? When you add up the mainstream (left) and conservative sites you're looking at a giant skew to readership of left-leaning sites. It doesn't make sense.

More evidence came to light when after the 2016 US Presidential election The BBC, The Guardian, The New York Post and The Washington Post were all reporting dramatically increased traffic from Alexa. You can see on Archive.org that more than half this traffic was from China. Given that amount of traffic was coming from China, it suggests all the sites were actually experiencing a considerable decline. After TGP article Alexa obviously manually edited the stats and not long after that the traffic began to rise again - that time with likely more expensive US bot traffic.

Vice seems to be in a bad way financially, having had about $1 billion poured into it since 2015, including money from Soros.

Salon has just been saved from the abbyss after it was revealed it's been running at a loss for years, propped up by big money.

The Guardian had been losing huge amounts of cash for years and was only brought into the black by huge layoffs.

Then you have The Wasington Post and The New York Time bankrolled by billionaires. I'm sure there is more.

Here is a roundup of layoffs this year:

New York Mag: 32 jobs
Elle Canada & family: 28
Vice: 250
Verizon (Yahoo, AOL, HuffPost): 800
BuzzFeed: 200 (what makes it sweeter is they are accused of bumping off victims)
Condé Nast (globohomo central): 10

2018:

Vox: 50

2017:

ESPN: 150
Buzzfeed: 100
Guardian: 290
New York Times: 109

I'm sure there's more.

Any insights to these men behind the curtain?

Post: #2

Observation by Nassim Taleb on how the MSM form of news is actually the exception in human history, not the rule.

https://medium.com/conversations-with-ty...4620da8a57

Quote:COWEN: Should we someday just go all collectively and turn our back on social media?

TALEB: No, because social media is Lindy [(compatible)]. Let me tell you . . . Lindy means that there are things that are robust in time, like some basins that are robust in time. You realize that for example, this cup of coffee . . . OK, I’m not going to go back to Phoenicians — .

[laughter]

COWEN: You can, You can.

TALEB: No, no. OK, the book is 500 years old under this form, and maybe several thousand years old under a different form. So Lindy means that they’re robust in time, and they come back. Until they disappear, they tend to come back.

Now, it so happens that at no point in history, except during the postwar period, did people receive news without being conveyors of news. That nuclear family, where people — pop, mom, 2.2 kids, one dog — are watching TV, receiving information and not transmitting.

The solitude of big city blocks — that was the idea. Well, it’s gone because traditionally, you get the news and you purvey the news. So you’re a recipient and a purveyor, with a little bit of alteration in the process.

There, we get back to the social media. I knew very quickly to learn to identify that there was a false alert yesterday in Saudi Arabia, as if there was a coup or something. You can figure out that there are some people you can trust, others you can’t trust. Those you can’t trust, you quickly identify them — those who cry wolf all the time.

Social media is bringing us back to a naturalistic environment because, say, in Athens, what was the newsroom?

The newsroom was the barbershop — you go in, you give information, and you take information. Or a fish market — you go in, you get fish, you get information and give information. And funerals, where you go in and chat, fake like you’re crying, and then you’re getting all the gossip.

[laughter]

We’re gossip machines. Social media is great in that respect. I love it. I don’t know if you were told. I refused to have a book tour. I refused to give media interviews. You asked at least. I gave one by accident.

[laughter]

Send my book to newspapers. Random House said, “What?!” I said, “OK, fine, other authors. It’s OK.” They agreed, although they cheated, I think, by sending some people the book.

God save us from people who mean well. -storm

Post: #3

Haven't you heard, gework?

There's no tribe or agenda involved in pouring billions into failing media mouthpieces.

It's all just market driven.