Understanding Media 101

Culture
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This is an important point on the “there is no such thing as a neutral media” map. The words chosen, such as “detained” versus “incarcerated” create a bias.

Again, some biases are less obvious, and “bias” doesn’t have to mean sinister. It’s just that there is no such thing as neutral.

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Once again: propaganda is about selection and emphasis.

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Pity, since there’s so much cool stuff happening all around Africa right now. Great solutions to decentralised power generation, communication networks, and other important things.

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Thread:

There is no such thing as unbiased media.

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On a slightly related note, I’m tired of NYT’s new paywall. I may not want to subscribe, but I don’t want to hand over my data for a free account, either.

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I’m finding ublock origin is defeating it for now.

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Hm. Need to recheck my settings, I think.

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I read those articles in a text-mode browser (links). There might be an easier way to get around it, but ublock origin wasn’t doing it for me and that works well. It’s also kinda cool to see the web in text-only mode again, and see how fast and uncluttered it could be if we hadn’t screwed it all up for advertising and tracking and stuff.

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So that’s where I left it!

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The Portland Tribune is generally a shit paper owned and run by a petty aristocrat, but they do tend to avoid the term “antifa” unless they’re quoting somebody and have to explain what it means. They usually say “anti-fascist” instead. Which, good for them.

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Or how the media talks about gang members, for that matter. But yes, tell me again how black and brown people are so dangerous, but these guys are just misguided young men.

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This is a great historical summary (thanks Cory!) about the history and present of Internet ads. Some things which are missing, and always are:

  • Back in the days of aerial TV, advertisers had to fight for the eyes and ears of the audience as well. People wandered away from the TV set every commercial break, so much that for “big event” viewing city water departments could measure the collective toilet flushes. Advertisers did and do try being more obnoxious, but they also worked hard to make their ads worth watching. How many internet ads do you really love?
  • Since I set up my Pi-Hole, it’s been shocking how much faster sites load. Sites I’d given up on for being too slow are now browsable again. Bandwidth, even on unlimited plans, typically has caps and throttles past a certain point. Even if it doesn’t, the user’s patience does. How much do advertisers take this into account when creating ads? Not much, it seems.

In other words, if they want consumers to stop ad-blocking, maybe they should make ads into worthwhile, accessible content.

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Advertising is in the same economic realm as negative interest rates. No one can figure out how to stop doing things backward (making shitty things to interrupt people as they go about their day, whether online or in real life), but when things are totally fucking backward, they’re like, “let’s do the backward thing, only redefine it as the new hotness”.

Meanwhile, in real life, it does little or nothing but soak up money and talent. Just like the increasingly “nudged” world of economics.

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Many ads include flashing and/or animation. Many ads also break scrolling. They use position:sticky or position:fixed to either refuse to scroll with the rest of the page, or to animate and pop up or move around as the reader tries to scroll through the page. Either way it’s at best harmful web design, and it’s an accessibility problem.

If web accessibility standards prioritized accessibility instead of prioritizing existing web design features, and if they were enforced, maybe they would lead to a switch to less painful web advertising.

P.S. 2 major edits.

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