Obligatory Google News "Comments" Post - Google is creating original reporting
So Google News has comments (for small values of comments), and it is incumbents upon everyone to comment.
Of course, this gives Google a huge amount of power in picking and choosing who will be allowed to comment. They state:
We'll be trying out a mechanism for publishing comments from a special subset of readers: those people or organizations who were actual participants in the story in question
Essentially, they're taking their function as an automatic aggregator, and adding some human ORIGINAL REPORTING in follow-up. Very minimal original reporting, but they are in effect generating their own follow-up reaction articles from the original aggregated articles.
And wow, does this create some perverse incentives that can lead to unintended consequences. I can think of one obvious result off the top of my head:
1) Get mentioned in a popular article for doing something outrageous
Then either
2) Google gives you a platform to say whatever you want
Or then
2) Scream GOOGLE IS CENSORING!!! as loud as you can, and watch the fireworks.
I'm sure there's plenty of devious schemes hatching in the minds of flacks. This is going to draw a huge amount of attention. And that draws people to manipulate it.
By Seth Finkelstein | posted in google | on August 08, 2007 11:22 AM (Infothought permalink)
Ouch, your "cancel" button should have a "Delete all content?" warning :/
I just typed something, hit the wrong button, and in a split second everything was gone because the comments window closed...
In any case, in a nut-shell, I wonder if Google will allow e.g. if you (as verified part of the story) send them a link to say illegal porn, or bomb building plans...
Blame the software :-).
Google's made clear they won't publish it "if your comment includes hate speech, calls to violence, or other offensive comments."
http://www.google.com/support/news/bin/answer.py?answer=74133&topic=12285
re: "We'll be trying out a mechanism for publishing comments from a special subset of readers: those people or organizations who were actual participants in the story in question."
Well, Seth, consider the hypothesis that Google is trying to do some constructive here.
Suppose, a poor subject is slammed gently or harshly by a news article. Google may be assuming something that much of the major newspapers aren't, at this point: that the subject of a story has the "right of first comment." (that is, even if the subject doesn't comment first, it is visually brought to the top.)