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The Verge isn't the first publication to make this case. It won't be the last. It's just that those making this case frequently turn into brutal dictatorships. However wrong popular ideas are, they're far less wrong than despots.

The Verge had a long read on life of Facebook moderators that is worth a read if you have the time. https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/25/18229714/cognizant-facebo...

It looks to be partly her decision, if I'm reading The Verge correctly:

"After the email went out, Gebru told managers that certain conditions had to be met in order for her to stay at the company. Otherwise, she would have to work on a transition plan."

https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/3/22150355/google-fires-tim...

Foundryside from Robert J. Benett - it's a fantasy novel where magic system is based upon reverse engineering power words and jealusly keeping them secret from other trade organizations. Magic in that world is literally intellectual property and is compiled into huge dictionaries which aren't far from being programs. The whole "feel" of the world is very victorian - something akin to Dishonored if anyone played this.

The prose is very readable, the characters pretty awesome and it's just such a very fresh take on fantasy.

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37173847-foundryside?fro...

And The Verge ("Foundryside is a cyberpunk adventure wrapped in an epic fantasy novel"): https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/23/18148907/foundryside-rob...

When Mayer took over Yahoo, it was a poison chalice. I don't think anyone could have turned Yahoo around unless they were truly exceptional. For the truly exceptional, Yahoo would give them little benefit and they could do better elsewhere (financially and recognition wise).

Mayer's performance had nothing to do with her gender. I'm adding this statement to respond to some other peoples' comments.

I also wholly agree that diversity for diversity's sake is idiotic. Can't wait to read The Verge and Ars Technica spins on this one..

They've been like that for years. I had to stop reading Gizmodo because it turned from actual news about tech to whatever the narcissistic staff felt like.

https://gizmodo.com/runaway-peacock-ditches-his-human-family...

https://gizmodo.com/heres-how-long-itd-take-you-to-poop-a-le...

How are posts like that at all relevant? I mean I'd rather read The Verge than what these people are putting out. The bias that Gawker had is that of a crazy person. They always told us that they were there for the people delivering hard evidence, but meanwhile give a damn about a person's rights to privacy, AND THEN CELEBRATED THAT FACT.

Check out Gawker's defunct site as it stands now. It's a dumpster fire that points fingers at everyone but themselves.

+1 for being proactive and drawing attention early in the comment period, instead of the more frequent 'only 24 hours left to do something we could have told you about months ago, but didn't.' This less sensationalist and more responsible approach to journalism is why I've been reading the Verge more frequently.

It's killing me that no one is talking about authentic speech. We have very little.

Social mediums (Twitter, HN, Instagram, Yelp, etc) must also support verified identities. Opt-in. Just like metafilter.com. With onerous penalties for impersonation.

The outrage machine apologists (select examples below) are trying to post-authentic inauthentic speech. Algorithms will save us.

This cannot work. Ever. Because the belligerents in the computational propaganda arms race will always overwhelm authenticity.

  Tristan Harris - The Social Dilemma
  Casey Newton - The Verge
  Philip N. Howard - Lies Machines
  Frédéric Filloux - News Quality Scoring Project

All tortured performant whining about censorship and bias and Section 230 is not helping. No one is going to take away anyone's favorite chew toy. The food fight over lies and bias will continue unabated.

--

Said another way:

Journalism is real simple. Show your data, cite your sources, sign your name.

Support authentic journalism, with real infrastructure. Give people an alternative to the outrage machine.

I started reading The Verge back in 2011 when it first launched. The creativity (as shown in their very detailed exclusives; one example: [1]) they had at the time was pretty incredible.

Unfortunately, I have noticed, and I think others as well, that they've kind of been in a downhill stretch for the past few months at least. Maybe not creativity-wise, but structurally and even grammatically. It's been a bit disappointing.

Hopefully Nilay can begin to refresh their vision and work on bringing overall quality back to where it used to be.

[1] http://www.theverge.com/2011/11/3/2504531/jetpack-history-fu...

I stopped reading The Verge after their contribution to the "Shirt-gate" debacle.

I feel like that has become my typical experience reading The Verge - "here's this thing! You shouldn't use it, you should totally use this thing that we (or our sponsors) like better!"

I remember reading their articles about the Windows Phone and some early Android devices, and realizing that the 'review' was just some guy complaining about how it's not like an iPhone, as if approaching a user interface or solving a problem in a different manner than Apple was inherently a bad thing for all use cases, in all places. That sort of promoted fanboy-ism permeates, well, almost all of their articles, be it a tech piece or a purported report on politics.

I used to read The Verge and i don't think I've ever seen many articles or reviews related to Microsoft shown in good light, for example even when most other sites reported Gmail active sync support being dropped as a bad move, The Verge reported that as Microsoft not supporting open standards (which was true) and in the review of the Nokia Lumia 920 the camera was rated the same as an iPad camera with the reasoning that the quality was not needed and cameras like the iPhone's were what customers really wanted

tl;dr they never jump on MS bandwagons

But the television program is broadcast from one transmitter and is chosen by the TV company. Defining the 'content' to be legally protected is easy then - it is what the broadcast transmitter sent. In the UK we have a system for monitoring the actual broadcast output of TV stations to ensure that they comply with certain rules, so there is an evidence base. TV broadcasting is (usually) organised on national territories so there is no doubt as to the laws that the broadcaster and viewer are operating under.

My understanding is that the content of a typical Web news site is assembled from a number of different servers and the advertising content depends on the browsing history from one particular client as detected by scripts that are served from an advert server - the 'tracking' mentioned in the OA.

My point is that deciding what the 'content' was that was protected might be difficult under those circumstances. Also which legal entity is going to do the 'protecting'? Suppose I'm reading The Verge: I'm sitting in the UK, and a lot of our internet traffic goes through a large interchange in Amsterdam. The Verge is based in US. See my point?

'Context' does not change facts or logic: identity is part of documents, the war gets bigger. You've written a lot, it's mostly true, but nothing actually addresses the comment you're responding to.

Regarding 'unmasking': many doxxers use this argument: when they do publish people's information, they're unmasking bad actors, when their opponents do it, they're doxxing. For example Sarah Jeong, the author of the book you mention, wrote for The Verge, which tacitly endorses doxxing by ignoring it when performed by political groups it supports.

I see where the Swype folks are coming from, but it's a bit like the people who complained against the existence of mailinator.com a decade back. Are they seriously claiming that a company whose entire business is based on making sense of dubious data will completely break down if its analysis service gets some bad inputs? How do they deal with shady manufacturers who return wrong data?

Swype is operating in a marketplace that is full of apps crying wolf and asking for way more permissions than they need, usually for unknown purposes. For example, I like to read The Verge and use its app[1], but it has "read phone status and identity" and "modify or delete the contents of your USB storage" in its manifest, which I'm not comfortable with. There is nothing that explains what they use this information for, how long they store it, and who they share it with. Heck, my desktop browser doesn't give theverge.com this permission and yet the site functions just fine.

Why should I bare my personal data to the whole world just because one developer is too lazy to implement checks on his inputs?

[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.verge.andr...