Split Thread MSN and other news aggregator website policies

[Andy_Ross]

Split from

Thread 'Trump's Second Term'

Nov 15, 2024

General thread.

To kick off, a list of appointees to key positions, notable for their loyalty to Trump.

Trump's picks for key positions in his second administration

Donald Trump is starting to fill key posts in his administration, putting an emphasis on aides and allies who were his strongest backers during the campaign.

apnews.com

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• Replies: 41,938
• Forum: USA Politics

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Posted By: jimbob

Much like Germans who opposed the Third Reich.

For an easy, stress free life it's best just to go with the flow. I mean, what's the worst that could happen if big corporations take control of the primary means of global communication?

Quoting MSN is the same as supporting the Third Reich?

Gosh.

 

[Ivor the Engineer]

Quoting MSN is the same as supporting the Third Reich?

Gosh.

The erosion of standards is rarely dramatic. Each step seems like only a small shift from prior norms.

It'll be a giant leap for humanity when we get our information about the state of the world from "news" websites generated by hallucinating AIs that have been generated by scraping "news" websites generated by other hallucinating AIs. Expect headlines such as:

"Elon Musk has thousandth child with Martian"

Perhaps if we want quality journalism we should be prepared to pay for accountable humans to look into a topic and publish articles?

 

[Blue Mountain]

Quoting MSN is the same as supporting the Third Reich?

Gosh.

No. Using MSN is merely supporting a hostile actor on the web. MSN effectively steals its content from other sites without properly referencing it back to the source. In most areas that's called plagiarism. As I've pointed out, it also screws with one of the original goals of the web (open access) by rendering its content in a way that causes it not to work with little known but very useful tools.

Just as there's more to the internet than the Web, so too there's more to the Web than just Chrome, Firefox, and Safari.

 

[TomB]

No. Using MSN is merely supporting a hostile actor on the web. MSN effectively steals its content from other sites without properly referencing it back to the source. In most areas that's called plagiarism. As I've pointed out, it also screws with one of the original goals of the web (open access) by rendering its content in a way that causes it not to work with little known but very useful tools.

Just as there's more to the internet than the Web, so too there's more to the Web than just Chrome, Firefox, and Safari.

Can you give an example of content on MSN that is not properly referenced back to its source?
Everything I saw on the front page had the original source clearly indicated. Every article I then clicked on had a clear link back to the original article.

Very similar to newspapers (remember those?) putting (AP) or (UPI) to indicate the source of the story.

I get the dislike of Microsoft. But it appears to me that MSN mostly works as a compilation or feed site that hosts or directs you to external content. I don't see anything resembling plagiarism. Like I said, that's how most local newspapers get their non-local stories.

 

[newyorkguy]

I don't see anything resembling plagiarism. Like I said, that's how most local newspapers get their non-local stories.

I agree. I often go to MSN when I want to read a news story -- especially when it's breaking news -- to read stories from other sources that are pay-walled on the original site. MSN often publishes these stories -- with full accreditation -- and makes them available for free.

Thanks MSN!

 

[dudalb]

No. Using MSN is merely supporting a hostile actor on the web. MSN effectively steals its content from other sites without properly referencing it back to the source. In most areas that's called plagiarism. As I've pointed out, it also screws with one of the original goals of the web (open access) by rendering its content in a way that causes it not to work with little known but very useful tools.

Just as there's more to the internet than the Web, so too there's more to the Web than just Chrome, Firefox, and Safari.

I got news for you: every major news agency does that. SOP.

 

[Blue Mountain]

Can you give an example of content on MSN that is not properly referenced back to its source?
Everything I saw on the front page had the original source clearly indicated. Every article I then clicked on had a clear link back to the original article.

Where is the "clear link back to the original article"? I'm not seeing it on MSN article pages. Yes, the source is indicated at the top of the page, but clicking on it takes you to another MSN page.

For example, look at this article on MSN:

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/weather/topstories/powerful-storm-sparks-wildfire-outbreak-across-southern-u-s-plains/ar-AA1AWu7r

I don't see any active link on that page which takes me to the source article on The Weather Network's site, that being:

https://www.theweathernetwork.com/en/news/weather/severe/wildfire-outbreak-ongoing-across-southern-u-s-plains

I had to use a search engine to find the above link, for it's not in an obvious link that I can see on MSN's page.

There is a link at the top of the article that says "The Weather Network," but it doesn't go to theweathernetwork.com; it goes to a collection of pages on MSN with stories from the weather network.

Very similar to newspapers (remember those?) putting (AP) or (UPI) to indicate the source of the story.

I get the dislike of Microsoft. But it appears to me that MSN mostly works as a compilation or feed site that hosts or directs you to external content. I don't see anything resembling plagiarism. Like I said, that's how most local newspapers get their non-local stories.

Indeed, my charge of plagiarism was over the top and likely wrong. MSN could well have agreements in place with the sites from where they source their articles for republication, and may even be paying to carry the content. (If they haven't, they are violating the sources' copyrights.)

I stand by my comments of MSN being a hostile actor on the web by using JavaScript to load their content, in violation of established web standards.

 

[surrogate]

Where is the "clear link back to the original article"? I'm not seeing it on MSN article pages. Yes, the source is indicated at the top of the page, but clicking on it takes you to another MSN page.

For example, look at this article on MSN:

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/weather/topstories/powerful-storm-sparks-wildfire-outbreak-across-southern-u-s-plains/ar-AA1AWu7r

I don't see any active link on that page which takes me to the source article on The Weather Network's site, that being:

https://www.theweathernetwork.com/en/news/weather/severe/wildfire-outbreak-ongoing-across-southern-u-s-plains

I had to use a search engine to find the above link, for it's not in an obvious link that I can see on MSN's page.

There is a link at the top of the article that says "The Weather Network," but it doesn't go to theweathernetwork.com; it goes to a collection of pages on MSN with stories from the weather network.

If you click the little box with the arrow to the right of 406k Followers, it takes you to the publishers website.

 

[Blue Mountain]

If you click the little box with the arrow to the right of 406k Followers, it takes you to the publishers website.

Thanks. That's nice, but a link to the article itself would be useful as well. That way people can easily link to the source instead of directing traffic to MSN. But that's not in Microsoft's interests, so they don't do it. Again, this is an example of a corporation going counter to what the web should be, and in my opinion that should be neither promoted nor tolerated.

 

[TomB]

Where is the "clear link back to the original article"? I'm not seeing it on MSN article pages. Yes, the source is indicated at the top of the page, but clicking on it takes you to another MSN page.

For example, look at this article on MSN:

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/weather/topstories/powerful-storm-sparks-wildfire-outbreak-across-southern-u-s-plains/ar-AA1AWu7r

I don't see any active link on that page which takes me to the source article on The Weather Network's site, that being:

https://www.theweathernetwork.com/en/news/weather/severe/wildfire-outbreak-ongoing-across-southern-u-s-plains

I had to use a search engine to find the above link, for it's not in an obvious link that I can see on MSN's page.

There is a link at the top of the article that says "The Weather Network," but it doesn't go to theweathernetwork.com; it goes to a collection of pages on MSN with stories from the weather network.



Indeed, my charge of plagiarism was over the top and likely wrong. MSN could well have agreements in place with the sites from where they source their articles for republication, and may even be paying to carry the content. (If they haven't, they are violating the sources' copyrights.)

I stand by my comments of MSN being a hostile actor on the web by using JavaScript to load their content, in violation of established web standards.

The link is usually at the bottom of the page and looks something like:



The link you provided is the only one I've seen without a link directly back to the article. The form of the link seems to vary with the source.



And then there's the box on the side that advertises the source site and (in most cases) lists other headlines:



It seems like MSN carries a lot of advertising for news sources. Yesterday, everything I saw on their front page had a direct link to the article. Not so much today, but there was always acknowledgment and a link to the source. I suspect it has to do with the URLs on news stories not always being static. This at least used to be a problem with linking news stories.

Anyway, it seems like they always link the source, often highlight additional content from the source, and I haven't seen where they edit the content.

I get different things on the front page at home than I do at work. At home I get a lot of articles from Guitar Player magazine. So it does configure to your viewing habits. Some like that. Some hate it. I'm neutral.

 

[Blue Mountain]

As for the JavaScript issue, if it's a problem, get a browser that can handle it.

This is a simplistic solution in that it assumes everyone can simply use a graphical browser that can run JavaScript.

The primary documentation for HTML, the language of the World Wide Web, refers to the browser is a web client. That is, software that interacts with a web server using the HTTP protocol and renders the resulting HTML. These clients are not restricted to the latest and greatest graphical web browsers. As I said earlier, there are non-graphical clients that are designed to be run from the command line as part of a process of automating interaction on the web. These include primary elinks and HTTPie, and wget and curl also fit into this category.

It's also possible that MSN's shenanigans also play havoc with screen readers for the blind, but I can't say that for certain.


Case in point: An elderly friend of mine has entered long term care. He worked for many years as a computer programmer and reads a lot of content on the web. The place where he is currently living doesn't have any computers accessible to the residents.

At home he had a Lenovo tablet he had purchased a few years ago, and his son suggested it would be a solution. It wasn't. Half the news sites my friend wants to read can't be viewed on the tablet.

The reason is the tablet runs Android 4.2.2, and the latest Firefox that can run on it is almost four years old. Now, news and media sites are among the worst offenders on the web when it comes to embracing modern standards without gracefully falling back to accommodate older browsers. MSN fails completely. The New York times sort of renders but leaves large blank areas. The Globe and Mail displays the front page, then totally blanks out. The LA Times displays the front page, then fails to display content when one clicks on a story to read it.

This is a perfectly functioning computer, but thanks to vendor lock-in (Lenovo no longer even acknowledges it made the tablet, let alone provides updates for it) we can't upgrade it to a newer version of Android so we can install an up-to-date web browser.

So tell me, how can he "get a browser than can handle it"?

 

[arthwollipot]

It's apparently not a "perfectly functioning computer".

 

[Blue Mountain]

It's apparently not a "perfectly functioning computer".

You're right.

What I meant was the hardware is functioning perfectly. The battery's still good, the system boots and runs, the display and bluetooth keyboard work, and WiFi (2.5G only) works.

As you noted, the software's rotted. There's no easy fix for that. An AI chatbot suggested it could be repurposed as an email reader that doubles as a digital picture frame.

 

[arthwollipot]

A four year old computer is "perfectly functional" only when it comes to running four year old software. Continuous improvement is built into the architecture and infrastructure of computers. And yes, I said "improvement" despite the clear trend towards en****tification. Modern computers are faster, more efficient, and more secure than the computers of ten years ago. Keep up or get left behind.

The alternative is shouting at clouds.

 

[Brainster]

A four year old computer is "perfectly functional" only when it comes to running four year old software.

It's not a four-year-old computer; it appears to be a 12-year-old computer. Android V4.2.2 was released in March 2013. The four years old was an estimate of the age of the version of the Firefox that would run; the answer appears to be Firefox 55.0.2, which was released in August 2017.

 

[arthwollipot]

It's not a four-year-old computer; it appears to be a 12-year-old computer. Android V4.2.2 was released in March 2013. The four years old was an estimate of the age of the version of the Firefox that would run; the answer appears to be Firefox 55.0.2, which was released in August 2017.

I stand corrected. The point is still valid.

 

[Blue Mountain]

A four year old computer is "perfectly functional" only when it comes to running four year old software. Continuous improvement is built into the architecture and infrastructure of computers. And yes, I said "improvement" despite the clear trend towards en****tification. Modern computers are faster, more efficient, and more secure than the computers of ten years ago. Keep up or get left behind.

The alternative is shouting at clouds.

I partly disagree. The simplistic comment "keep up or get left behind" annoys me. I don't think that's true for very many other consumer items, regardless of their cost. A lot of very cheap electronics and household goods have a limited lifespan, but that's due to low quality and not the forward march of technology.

I wanted to "keep up" with the tablet, but the manufacturer effectively prohibited me from doing so. Lenovo certainly needs to be shamed for declaring their product obsolete after a decade and not providing a consumer friendly upgrade path. As far as reading news on the web goes, it's now crippled.

There's continuous improvement, and there's also backwards compatibility.

• I can plug in a toaster that was made in 1920 (105 years old) and it will probably still make me toast, despite the fact the grid has been in continuous improvement for a century.
• I can plug a rotary dial telephone made in 1931 (94 years old; probably after wiring it with an RJ-12 terminal) into a jack and I bet I could make a call with it, because half a century after touch-tone was introduced the telephone system still supports analogue sets and pulse dialing.
• I can run an automobile built in 1945 (80 years old; provided I can get repairs) on today’s gasoline, although some tweaking might be required on the engine. Again, despite continuous improvement in motorcar technology (like crumple zones and pollution controls.)
• I can plug in an AM radio that was made in 1960 (65 years old, possibly older than you are) and still get an AM radio broadcast, despite continuous improvement in broadcasting technology.
• My car is 17 years old and it's running great.

And yet, an 11 year old tablet with a 5 year old browser can't reliably surf the web. Are crappy media sites to blame because they don't offer fallbacks for older tech? Is the tech to blame because it goes out of date every three years, leading to regrettable piles of e-waste?

To a large degree I can keep up, even on older hardware. The computer I'm typing this on is nine years old and I can reliably surf the web with it. That's because it's commodity hardware and I can keep the operating system up to date. I have a computer beside me with a BIOS date of October 2012 (13½ years old now), and the same is true for it. I just installed Linux Mint on it and it's working great. But again, that's because HP didn't lock me out of my own device and prohibit me from upgrading the software.

After working most of my life with computers, I'm starting to really dislike the upgrade treadmill.

 

[Blue Mountain]

It's not a four-year-old computer; it appears to be a 12-year-old computer. Android V4.2.2 was released in March 2013. The four years old was an estimate of the age of the version of the Firefox that would run; the answer appears to be Firefox 55.0.2, which was released in August 2017.

It's actually Firefox 68.11-ESR, released in July 2020. So it's coming up for five years old.

 

[arthwollipot]

I partly disagree. The simplistic comment "keep up or get left behind" annoys me. I don't think that's true for very many other consumer items, regardless of their cost...

Computers aren't toasters. Toaster technology hasn't really changed in the last fifty years. Computer technology has undergone continuous improvement, as Gordon Moore observed back in 1975. Furthermore, toasters don't come under attack by malicious agents, necessitating an ongoing and continuous arms race between toaster attackers and anti-toast-attack systems.

You may not like it, but that's how it is. Sure, there's a niche carved out for those who want to eschew the Microsofts and the Googles and the Apples of the world, but they will only ever be a minority. And even "rebel" open-source applications like LibreOffice still have to accommodate the Microsoft .docx format, or they're useless. They have to be able to talk to the rest of the world. I was at a launch event for the .pdf format back in the early 90s, and it was lauded as a genuinely cross-platform compatible open document format. But it's owned and controlled by Adobe, and always has been.

The upgrade treadmill is unavoidable - in fact, it's necessary. Hardware gets better, faster, with greater capacity. Software companies update software to take advantage of that capability, necessitating further updates in hardware. On and on in an increasing spiral. Sure, Moore's Law has flattened out in recent years, but you still have the malicious agents - some of which now aren't even human. AI-powered malware requires AI-powered protection. Your 12-year old computer running 5-year old software isn't just incapable - it's vulnerable. Not updating older computers carries real risks.

Be the change you want to see in the world, sure. Go for it. But there comes a point where being that change looks a whole lot like tilting at windmills.