Human Curation Sets Apple News Apart From Algorithm-Focused News Sources Like Google and Facebook

[KazKam]

It always creeps me out when I realize how many Trump supporters there are on this site.

They’ve all been trained by their master to worry about unfair media bias, etc.

You're committing a few logical fallacies here (composition/division, black or white, and false cause). Equating "Trump supporters" to anyone who holds a view ideologically different from yours.

Then again, logical reasoned arguments tend to evade those who make the bulk of their decisions based on knee-jerk reactions, what the unequivocally biased mainstream media spoon feeds them, and emotion.

 

[JRobinsonJr]

The truth has a left bias.

...

I'd prefer news that reflects truth and reality, which is why the New York Times and other professional journalists are far more prestigious than right-wing trolls like Fox News.

Actually, our first problem is the word "truth". That word has an inherently philosophical meaning. The word we should be using is "fact".

Fact: The climate is changing
Fact: The climate has always been changing

Fact: Immigration has great potential
Fact: Immigration has the ability to overwhelm social services

Those are facts. Anything else is just spin.

Those "right-wing trolls" are just as bad as the 'left-wing socialists". Both want to push an agenda and will shape the message so that they appeal to your personal sense of right/wrong and justice/injustice. No facts required.

 

[bollman]

But oh, you miss that the scientists responsible for the IPCC report are biased!

 

[citysnaps]

So you trying to pressure him into telling you what his preferred sources are so you can trash them correct? You can’t see that he has a fair point... that he likes that he can pick and choose which sites he trusts and doesn’t. Like any other citizen.

Calm down. That may well be a tactic you'd use, which you are now trying to project on me.

For myself, I was simply curious and wanting to understand the news sources he does like as he was willing to post the sources he doesn't like.

 

[Michael Goff]

Is anyone skeptical of someone having the power of showing you what you see in the news?

Even with an algorithm, it’s still a person making the decision. Or do you think the algorithm makes itself?

 

[jpn]

And how big is the news team? How diverse? Sure, algorithmic news promotion will create an echo-chamber and thus polarization but a news compilation selected by a few will definitely not be neutral or more true or unbiased.

you use the word "diversity" here inappropriately.

promotion of diversity should be what gets minority persons an opportunity to be on the team.
in that sense yes, diversity is absolutely required. hiring opportunities.

however, your intention in using the word "diversity" in this context means you expect that minority persons would be spokespeople for the causes their minority groups usually are associated with.
this kind of thinking has NO place in any work situation that involves news and impartial reporting and aggregation of news.

 

[inkswamp]

Actually, our first problem is the word "truth". That word has an inherently philosophical meaning. The word we should be using is "fact".

Fact: The climate is changing
Fact: The climate has always been changing

Fact: Immigration has great potential
Fact: Immigration has the ability to overwhelm social services

Those are facts. Anything else is just spin.

Those "right-wing trolls" are just as bad as the 'left-wing socialists". Both want to push an agenda and will shape the message so that they appeal to your personal sense of right/wrong and justice/injustice. No facts required.

This is a false equivalency. The left- and right-wing in America both have extremist and annoying elements, but your post illustrates one of the most frustrating things about mainstream conservatives nowadays, that they will frame things in such a way as to omit important aspects of an issue, to create a false binary or to suggest any problem is part of some left-wing agenda. Let's rephrase your facts to highlight what you left out.

Fact: The climate is changing
Fact: The climate has always been changing
Fact: The climate is changing far more rapidly than existing climate models predict

Fact: Immigration has great potential
Fact: Immigration has the ability to overwhelm social services
Fact: America underfunds social services in favor of corporate welfare and tax cuts for the wealthy

There's a subtle and false binary in the way you presented those issues and that's not being done by extremists, but by mainstream conservatives. It's an insidious way to frame issues, limit discussion and cut off arguments. I can't think of an analog to this done by lefties.

 

[jeremiah256]

My guess is that like their upcoming shows, Apple is going to work very hard not to offend anyone. Which is one reason why if you don't change your location and restrictions in settings for the United States (maybe other western nations?), you aren't going to even see the app. So, I'd wager the default setting are going to be very milquetoast.

Once you curate their curation, by going in and modifying sources and subjects, it's no worst or better than Google or Amazon's algorithms. And, IMHO, none of them are as good or as informative as creating your own 'magazine' with Flipboard or browsing through Reddit.

 

[unobtainium]

Actually, our first problem is the word "truth". That word has an inherently philosophical meaning. The word we should be using is "fact".

Fact: The climate is changing
Fact: The climate has always been changing

Fact: Immigration has great potential
Fact: Immigration has the ability to overwhelm social services

Those are facts. Anything else is just spin.

Those "right-wing trolls" are just as bad as the 'left-wing socialists". Both want to push an agenda and will shape the message so that they appeal to your personal sense of right/wrong and justice/injustice. No facts required.

But see, here’s the problem. Facts can be strung together to create erroneous impressions, as you just did above.

Fact: the climate has never before warmed at the rapid speed it is currently. It is warming an order of magnitude faster than during the typical Ice Age rebounds of the past. We know all this from extensive work on paleo climate proxies.
Fact: the current warming is human-caused, and we understand exactly how the process works. We have understood the effects of added CO2 in the atmosphere for decades.
Fact: despite knowing all this, we’re not taking sufficient action to prevent 1.5C warming by 2050, which means disastrous consequences will be seen in most of our lifetimes.
Fact: Fox News never reports any of this, despite it being the scientific consensus, the official position of the United Nations, etc

 

[hellopupy]

Silicon Valley is 90% liberal.

Now how likely is it that your new Apple human news experience is unbiased?

Why view the world through another human's heart and eyes? We have our own heart and own eyes.

 

[alex2792]

I’m sure that Apple only hires the most unbiased marxists, feminists and ethnic studies graduates. The new fair and balanced!

 

[LizKat]

I learned critical thinking and that is what keeps me away from the likes of CNN, Fox, MSNBC, NYT....etc. All you have to do is go any of those sources and see in 2-3 seconds the bias of each of those. Fox - Trump can do not wrong and 80-90% of the main page is just that. CNN and MSNBC - Trump is the root of all evil with 80-90% of their main page showing that. Also in all of those places 70% opinion pieces and 30% (or less) actual news. Also hype/link bait drives revenue for those MSM sources so everything posted on all of those sites, especially the opinion pieces is suspect IMHO.

You're still focused on politics. There's a lot of news past that in a newspaper. The NYT, WaPo, WSJ are reliable papers of record for far more than just politics. They provide the nuts and bolts of what is "news we can use" every day in coverage of international affairs, economics and finance, the arts, technology, sciences, health and wellness, and let's not leave out sports. And, they are responsive to need for corrections, and do incorporate them or append to original pieces.

Their offerings get picked up by other publishers and news aggregators. It's expensive to do what papers of record do, and they are worth supporting unless you actually plan to jet around the world and inform yourself from "sources" every morning on your own dime.

On other sources: I wouldn't give up the long reads in the FT or The New Yorker for all the lattes I don't drink every month. It's true that I might be tempted to forego my sub to stuff like The National Review sometimes on days I can't find much of anything I'm inclined to agree with there (same as the FT or WSJ when it comes to their opinions sometimes) but I soldier on with those anyway, figuring innocence of conservative thought is neither bliss nor a path to wisdom. I'm as capable as anyone else of following the wrong gods home: it's pretty easy, if one never hears anything different. I like to listen to disparate views of the same facts or events and then make up my own mind on relevant policy.

The only TV news I watch is the occasional clip from what people stick in forums I frequent, or links to similar fare that people send me via text or email. The graphic immediacy of video can seem very compelling but there's nothing like print (or online equivalent) for context, which to me is everything.

And, one can process a whole lot more info per minute reading a news article than in watching someone talk on video or podcast, even if they speak rapidly. So I tend to agree with you on the matter of avoiding Fox, CNN, etc.

To me the whole talking heads model of television that was ushered in with the advent of cable --solving the problem how to fill those hours cheaply?!-- has largely been a waste of spectrum and a travesty of the concept of informing the general public. It's infotainment, pure and simple, and has steadily followed the law of least common denominator in parallel to other TV entertainment like "reality shows". I fault it as contributory to the hyperpartisan era we now live in. Nothing sells ad space like people getting hot under the collar on TV. It's near blood sport now. Not news we can use for any common good.

EDIT -- On topic (oops): I like Apple News for encouraging a look at mainstream news providers. And for staying away from uncorroborated if thrilling tweets and other social media entertainment masquerading as news...

 

[nnoble]

Can you name four or five of your favorite sources you rely on for your daily news?

Why do you want this information? Anyone interested in ‘news’ will frequently read from across the cultural and political spectrum and vary the sources to reflect current events.

 

[T Coma]

The main concern brought up in regards to human editors are their potential bias toward certain political coverage. In response, Kern says that bias can be baked into an algorithm's code, and that humans offer far more subtly in the decision making process of sharing the news.

That may be a response, but it's hardly an answer to the concern. Kern also could have said, "Cottage cheese," which would also have qualified as a response, as well as being equally unhelpful.

The concern is of bias in selecting news stories to be presented to the reader through whichever method of discrimination. All that's apparent here is that a person (and employer) with the "subtly" of their biases, will pick the stories as opposed to algorithms in which the biases are "baked into" the code. Different means, same ends.

 

[AppleInLVX]

Wouldn't know, living in Canada and all.

Amen.

 

[LizKat]

I’m sure that Apple only hires the most unbiased marxists, feminists and ethnic studies graduates. The new fair and balanced!

Either you're missing a couple of emoticons there, or your post reveals enough bias to disqualify you from assessing what might ever be a new (or old, for that matter) "fair and balanced" take on news presentation.

I'm going to go with you were missing an emoticon.

 

[citysnaps]

Why do you want this information? Anyone interested in ‘news’ will frequently read from across the cultural and political spectrum and vary the sources to reflect current events.

And why do you need to know? My question wasn’t directed to you. Are you his/her spokesperson?

 

[AngstyKylo]

If you tell people the earth is flat, they believe it after watching some YouTube/Facebook nonsense. Especially as they’re then directed to a whole load of related bias stuff in the future. Not to mention the ads...

 

[pratikindia]

Human curation is the worst thing. It will be definitely biased. Those people will decide what you should read or listen. It will be affected by their political, religious views which is bad. At least algorithm curation can be made unbiased, but not the human curation. It will be always biased.
[doublepost=1540527934][/doublepost]

Personally not a fan of human curation of algorithms. Back when they announced the new iTunes I was so excited but then dismayed to hear they were anti algorithms and pro human curation. YouTube Music for instance nails my specific tastes everytime as did Pandora mostly and Spotify. But Apple Music was almost always a total miss. They know what I've listened to and play those artists but not the right songs at the right time, or importantly modern covers of songs I've previously loved.

Agreed. I have been a AM subscriber from the beginning. The so called "human curation" is always a miss. But Spotify is always spot on. I never listen to those AM curation. I will ditch AM if Spotify is available in my region in next few years.

 

[pdxrevolution]

Anybody have an idea what the white screen device is that’s next to the Smart Water bottle? It looks like an iPad with a massive bezel or one of those giant, old, white Kindles. Doesn’t look like something we’ve really seen before.

 

[nnoble]

And why do you need to know? My question wasn’t directed to you. Are you his/her spokesperson?

You miss the point of an open forum.

 

[rafark]

Are you even kidding me mac rumors? Google and Facebook process millions, most likely billions of sources per month. A bunch of people to handle that load is extremely naive at best.

When I search google a trending keyword, like "migration", their "top stories" are always spot on. Google's algorithms have no true competition.

Google may have their weaknesses but their data processing algorithms are not one of them. They have been doing this for more tan two decades and they excel at it.

 

[pankajdoharey]

Algorithms are pretty good at news aggregation, Humans have biases i would prefer an Algo Bot over humans.

 

[Abazigal]

Silicon Valley is 90% liberal.

Now how likely is it that your new Apple human news experience is unbiased?

Why view the world through another human's heart and eyes? We have our own heart and own eyes.

I wouldn’t use the word “unbiased”. We are all biased in our own ways.

The issue I see with using algorithms is that it essentially locks you in your own bubble. You are served only the news you want to see and being spared from the articles you have no interest in.

That’s the downside with services such as Facebook who are incentivised to keep you using their app for as long as possible, which means serving you a steady stream of content that appeals to you. And they do this because the more time you spend in their feed, the more ads get served and the more money Facebook earns.

I don’t mind a company like Apple hiring a team of editors to curate a feed of news articles from a varied spectrum of sources. Yes, some of the articles might not be what I want to read, and maybe that’s for the better, because it helps provide me with multiple perspectives. And I might need Apple to do this because I know that i am unlikely to do this on my own.

Maybe that’s the whole point, for your news sources to not be dictated by your own preferences. And I would trust Apple, whose incentives are very different from those of companies like google and Facebook, to get this right. More right than the aforementioned companies at any rate.

 

[Michael Goff]

Silicon Valley is 90% liberal.

Now how likely is it that your new Apple human news experience is unbiased?

Why view the world through another human's heart and eyes? We have our own heart and own eyes.

As opposed to human written algorithms, that magically have no bias /s
[doublepost=1540546815][/doublepost]

Algorithms are pretty good at news aggregation, Humans have biases i would prefer an Algo Bot over humans.

Algorithms have whatever biases the programmers have, though. They don’t code themselves.
[doublepost=1540546874][/doublepost]

I’m sure that Apple only hires the most unbiased marxists, feminists and ethnic studies graduates. The new fair and balanced!

Are you for real?