Comment by eevilspock | Hacker News Reader

Comment by eevilspock | Hacker News Reader

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I deeply agree that human bias is a problem in general, but I prefer the reader's bias for the content over the bias of the advertiser or the reader's bias for click-bait. Do you prefer the current world where clicks, click-bait and other manipulations determine money flows?

The grossly perverted incentives of the ad-driven web aside, is what people read today less subject to bias? People choose, for example, to read/watch the NY Times vs WSJ, Politico vs Drudge Report, or MSNBC vs Fox News based on which publications line up with their biases.

If I don't get to decide whether my reading choices are due to my biases or my ability to discern quality or truth, who does? You? Google? Huff Post? HN's ranking algorithm X the aggregate mindset of HN readers? None of these are biased?

People voting with their wallets is the bedrock of the free market, which despite its shortcomings is vastly better than an economy driven by clicks and the manipukation thereof, and driven by advertisers and their agendas.

Let me construct a scenario:

I come across some well done (by some objective measure: good references, background checks), long form investigative piece. It seems interesting, so I read it, but then find that it clashes with some deeply held belief of mine. I decide at that point that I want my money back, because whatever it is I read made me uncomfortable, or I just didn't like it. What this ends up incentivizing is journalism that merely echoes the beliefs of your target demographic, dressed in beautiful language.

My problem is with the money back feature, not the entire idea of it. I think some other measure of engagement e.g. how much time one spends on an article, whether one keeps going back to a particular passage over and over, should be what determines if the publisher gets paid. Not whether the reader "likes" it.

One way we try to solve this is that you can refund "no questions asked" for the first ~20 seconds or so (since you probably weren't able to read the article past the first paragraph, and maybe accidentally clicked).

After those 20 seconds, you can still refund for 24h, but you get asked a single question: "Why do you want a refund?", with a couple of reasons (too short, too pricy, unreadable, not what I expected, ...) and a freeform option to give your own reason for the refund.

This is a metric we do pass on to the publishers, so they know why people refund certain articles. There is more we can do to understand refund-reasons better, but it's a start.

I think it evens out. Most people are pretty open to reasonable, objective expository writing. There are fringes that will dislike anything that challenges their beliefs.

Also I assume that opinion and advocacy pieces are clearly distinguished from straight news? Just because something is on the front page of the NYT or WSJ doesn't mean the writer doesn't have an agenda.

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