Ironically I opened this is private mode and was turned away. The New York Times is trying to have it both ways. I can log in and be tracked by their advertisers or I can be discreet and open articles from another source. I don't mind paying a small subscription but let me choose to deny your advertisers information on how I consume your content. If being tracked is part and parcel of being a subscriber then these pro-privacy articles look almost unethical.
> The New York Times is trying to have it both ways.
No, you need to think of the NYT (and any reputable newspaper) as being two separate entities: the newsroom and the advertising department, with a firewall between them [1]. You really don't want the newsroom killing a story because it makes the practices of the advertising department look bad.
Also, demands that the people who expose bad privacy practices have perfect privacy records themselves is to demand for privacy advocates to kill themselves a circular firing squad [2], so no one wins but the advertisers and privacy-invaders. Personally, I want these exposés carried by the publications with the greatest numbers of readers, and I'm not going to gripe too much about practices of those publications as long as the message gets out.
You're right; however, people (NYT subscribers and the general public) have the right to press the advertising department regarding the information and viewpoint presented by the newsroom.
If the advertising department is the entity responsible for the private-browsing situation, when a reader says "The New York Times" in this context, it should be read as "The New York Times' advertising department".
Ideally, the public editor (which the NYT no longer has) would do so, prompted by readers.
They aren't really though, they both make money on my privacy with relatively little consent. If that's the bad thing, I'm not sure I care that one of two parties says "sorry, I know this is bad" while still doing it. This could actually make them the worse of the two parties.
> [1]. You really don't want the newsroom killing a story because it makes the practices of the advertising department look bad.
this feels like bait, no one is asking for the newsroom to kill the story, they are asking for the newsroom to kill the practices of the advertising department.
> Also, demands that the people who expose bad privacy practices have perfect privacy records themselves
Its not a demand that they have perfect privacy records. Its kinda just pointing out that these authors have control of who they publish for and that its quite hollow to warn people about a poisonous medium in a way that draws more people through that medium.
This isn't to say they are bad people, just that they aren't great for pointing out bad practices they take part in 10 years after society has already baked them in.
I do warn that my opinion is colored by a belief that news orgs are responsible for a large part the of the normalization of our lack of privacy and current relationship with marketing. Which I see as sort of proto you-gotta-beleive-me methods.
> They aren't really though, they both make money on my privacy with relatively little consent.
They are and they aren't: they're two separate parts of one business. The advertising department makes money for the owners, while the newsroom writes the stories (and is hopefully insulated enough from the interests of the owners and ad department that it can be honest).
> this feels like bait, no one is asking for the newsroom to kill the story, they are asking for the newsroom to kill the practices of the advertising department.
The newsroom doesn't really have that authority. The firewall is there to protect the newsroom from the advertising department, because the ad department is naturally more powerful (due to newspapers being businesses and the ad department being the part that actually collects much of the revenue).
> Its kinda just pointing out that these authors have control of who they publish for and that its quite hollow to warn people about a poisonous medium in a way that draws more people through that medium.
The world is more complicated than that. It's more poisonous to distract from the warnings just to point out they weren't published in some low-reach niche publication whose privacy practices satisfy some random internet commenter.
If you actually care about privacy, you should celebrate these articles because they might reach a wide-enough audience to actually cause real action to fix the problems.
They could refuse to publish their articles for a corporation with such an "immoral" advertising department, but they don't, because they aren't genuine in their beliefs.
> They could refuse to publish their articles for a corporation with such an "immoral" advertising department, but they don't, because they aren't genuine in their beliefs.
That's an un-nuanced and extremely uncharitable statement. Have you ever heard the saying "choose your battles?" Don't you think people have to prioritize the actions they take to support their multifarious beliefs? You can have genuine beliefs without being destructively unreasonable.
I'm pretty sure the people in the New York Times newsroom value public good of having a functioning "fourth estate" [1] over having a tracker-free nytimes.com website, and thus are unwilling wage some destructive pyrrhic war with their employers over something as trifling as the latter. Especially when they can instead write a widely read series of articles that bring light to those practices, and perhaps lead to wider change.
But the fourth estate existed before the internet super powered predatory ad practices. I get that predatory advertisement was baked in from the beginning for news papers and that a lot of work has been done to mitigate those roots, but I feel your pushing a false dichotomy as nuance here. Its not an all or nothing we need to tare down the system and no one can ever advertise or write news papers again problem. Its a "this system is becoming more toxic, lets hope the people who built that system will help us transition away from that toxicity" combined with a "damn I wish it wasn't so difficult to get someone to understand something, when their salary depends upon them not understanding it" problem.
I would suggest
> the New York Times newsroom value public good of having a functioning "fourth estate"
AND it being well funded
AND that they are a part of it both individually(authors) and as an organization (NYT brand)
> but I feel your pushing a false dichotomy as nuance here.
No, not really. The GGP was basically pushing "we could destroy the village in order to save it" logic." The NYT is one of the few newspapers that may be able to weather the economic maelstrom that journalism is in the middle of, so it makes no sense for its journalists to go to war with its management over a niche issue, to satisfy a few strident people in the internet peanut gallery. I think it's pretty obvious that the turmoil the GGP's idea would cause would have far more negatives than positives.
Running all these stories definitely has more positives than negatives.
> AND it being well funded
> AND that they are a part of it both individually(authors) and as an organization (NYT brand)
Those are things you need for a functioning forth estate. Some people used to think that blogs (e.g. sites that lack the things you listed) could replace newspapers, but they were wrong.
>> refuse to publish their articles for a corporation with such an "immoral" advertising department,
>> GGP was basically pushing "we could destroy the village in order to save it" logic."
Why do I feel any criticism of reporters reads that way to you? I don't think they want to destroy reporters/the 4th estate at all it seems like what they want is the content creators to try and work for "moral" people and use the power they have as content creators to do so. This is not hugely simple and i agree with you on that. The false dichotomy your pushing into it is that any change which is hard is equivalent to destruction, or that any change that is fought for is someone going to "war" with the 4th estate.
The 4th estate existed before they rebuilt their village on sand. We would rather a solid foundation over them complaining about the sand they built the village on, while also claiming that attempts at change are just not feasible. Complaining about a thing and then saying but its okay as long as i get mine is exactly the thing about it seeming hollow.
>> Those are things you need for a functioning forth estate. Some people used to think that blogs (e.g. sites that lack the things you listed) could replace newspapers, but they were wrong.
I mean the fourth estate is not defined as being any individual reporter or brand. So this is a claim on your part that no reporter should lose or leave or protest their job and no paper should ever go defunct if we have a functioning fourth estate... I don't even really know how to address this claim, but it seems like its probably not what you mean? The point of adding those two things was to draw attention to the incentives of the individuals.
As for blogs, they also generally have trackers, the reason they couldn't replace newspapers was not the lack of trackers on them and people don't go to the new york times to see the ads.
It really feels like your painting a picture of this all or nothing situation with no individuals in it. while this person
> I don't mind paying a small subscription but let me choose to deny your advertisers information on how I consume your content.
seems to want to pay reporters instead of being tracked and this other one
> They could refuse to publish their articles for a corporation with such an "immoral" advertising department, but they don't, because they aren't genuine in their beliefs.
seems to be a "stop claiming your so good please" situation as opposed to the "destroy them all muhhaha" thing your claiming.
> niche issue, few strident people, peanut gallery, pyrrhic war, low-reach niche publication, some random internet commenter.
Common now, really? we are good enough for them to write a bunch of articles about our issue just not good enough to actually try and do anything? And we can't point out the hollowness of that position?
I guess I'm sorry I responded, I felt your original comment was informative but of two side channels that weren't really a response to the content of the comment you where responding to. That is to say while both things you stated in your OP where true neither seems to contradict the idea that the NYT wants it both ways, they actually seem to explain the method by which they achieve having it both ways. I hoped we could get to a better shared understanding of the positions but now I feel like your seeing my and the others arguments as "burn it to the ground" as opposed to "Its nice that they started talking about it being bad a little more frequently, it would be nicer if they chose not to do it, or at least tried to support some alternatives".
> The advertising department makes money for the owners,
I may be missing something here but they make money for the reporters as well right? I don't know, if the firewall involves the money as well, my opinion of the authors would change mildly as the benefits are less obvious/direct making it a easier mistake to fall into though I think the criticism stands either way.
> news department .... hopefully insulated enough from...
> to protect the newsroom from the advertising department
Right and I get that in most cases this works out. In this case the dynamic seems to insulate the marketing department actions from the meaningful critique given by the news room, and the news room from the moral/ethical implications of
benefiting from those actions. This moral/ethical insulation is the thing I am questioning.
> The newsroom doesn't really have that authority.
Thats why the Chinese firewall thing felt like bait, no one wants the newsroom to kill the story, and the news room as a corporate entity can't kill ads. The people creating the content though, the individuals... they could start producing
content for people who don't do this sort of stuff.
I mean I'm not even saying they should boycott the benefits and winfall of the system that every one around them is deeply embedded in already. I'm saying that as content creators, who are now aware of the situation, they are close to the only people who could populate a different system with content and users.
> It's more poisonous to distract from the warnings
This is not what is going on, the warning stands, people who are mad at the reporters for reporting this stuff like its a new hot scoop are not mad because they want to have no privacy... they seem to be mad because its been yelled about for
years. By both reporters and security experts, and the trend has only accelerated. At least that's what im mad about. Its not a "your bad" but a "stop claiming your so good please"
> celebrate these articles
I do, and have since they started coming out years and years ago (I even try and local archive them)... but I celebrate the article, and remember that the author could do better. This is why I see the comment about wanting it "both ways" as
valid. It sounds harsh but its not a claim that the reporters are the evil ones and shouldn't talk about privacy, its only the acknowledgment that they could take more steps not to be enablers and that they could actually bootstrap an
alternative. It's not really even a claim about this specific author or mainstream outlet.
> actually cause real action to fix the problems.
I don't think they will, I think they will just keep doing what they are doing (and have always done) then participate in the change (if it ever happens), and claim its what they wanted from the start, which brings me back to the idea of wanting it both ways.
We also know that news companies sometimes kill or refuse to cover sensitive stories that might reflect poorly on their benefactors or their politics. We know that the news companies attack social media as being toxic while demanding preferential treatment on the platforms they say are evil. I don't think we should view anything industry or government with rose colored glasses. The forces of money and corruption are felt just as much in the news industry as it is in every other industry and government.
But I agree with you that as long as the message gets out, it is a net benefit to society. It is better The NYTimes exposes privacy concerns even though they themselves violate their customers privacy. We don't live in an ideal world so we should hold everyone to an unattainable ideal standard.
Organizations are not people. Characterizing then as such can be very misleading and lead to wildly inaccurate conclusions about why they behave the way they do and what they are likely to do in the future.
Corporate personhood looks like a legal fiction of convenience to me, making contracts, accounting, and responsibilities/obligations etc. easier. Corporations can’t be called up for jury duty or conscripted into military service, they can’t vote, and they don’t need to exist for 18 years before being allowed to take out a line of credit.
The law can be whatever it is, but that has no bearing on the nature of an organization outside of incentivizing certain kinds of behavior.
A business is an organization that needs to make money to survive. Such an organization will find ways to make money, or cease to exist. No amount of law will change the nature of this dynamic.
Works fine for me incognito with ads and tracker blocking extensions enabled.
Keep in mind that the journalist who did the research and wrote the article did not have a say in how the employer who enabled them to write this piece generates revenue.
> Keep in mind that the journalist who did the research and wrote the article did not have a say in how the employer who enabled them to write this piece generates revenue.
In a way, she did. She is not an NYT employee, but rather, a professor at UNC Chapel Hill who could have published this piece elsewhere.
To be clear, I don't fault her for her choice at all. Just pointing out that we all "opt-in" to this system when we participate in it, and that's a part of the problem.
I do agree with you, though I think opting out of the practices of most websites is impractical. The utility of my usage of the Internet far outweighs some advertisers figuring out what I like to buy. We do need more robust advertising privacy laws, though.
By not being a NYT employee she has even less of a say in the matter. I'm sure she knows that nobody's going to read her article if it's published in The Daily Tar Heel.
If someone gave you the opportunity to publish an article in The New York Times would you say no?
I should also point out that the print edition of the NYT is still widely circulated, and it seems this article would have appeared in the Opinion section, tracker free :-)
> Just pointing out that we all "opt-in" to this system when we participate in it, and that's a part of the problem.
This really is a significant point.
All-visitor paywalls already crumbled, and a few of the worst excesses of tracking at least getting debated, so this is a place where users can get actual traction. It's the same sort of collective action problem as voting, true; writers and publishers have far more influence than any given reader. But it's also true that the space is far more open than voting.
There are a lot of news sites (e.g. The Boston Globe) which have shut out incognito access, filled their sites with trackers, and loaded up on dark patterns to push people towards misleadingly-priced subscriptions. And for almost everything they publish, there's minimal cost to just... not reading it. If it's a major story, it will be covered elsewhere. I know I'm not changing the world when I skip their links, but I'm protecting a bit of my own data, and putting a bit of pressure on them to do better.
