Tracking the Demise of 'Linux' News Sites (and of News Sites in General)
Faster than the ongoing demise of the supposedly "modern"-as-in-proprietary Web as a whole (and this demise sped up in 2024; Microsoft leads the pack)
We really dodged the bullet when we adopted Gemini Protocol 3 years ago. We diversified. As researchers are now admitting in shock and awe, the Web is nowadays largely junk, and chatbots are far from the sole culprit (this Web disarray by far predates these latest "hey hi" hype waves; we periodically wrote about this ages ago).
Today I'd like to discuss politely (not rant about) the state of the Web as we see it. Behind the scenes in this capsule and site we research and curate news all day long, reading heaps of text in countless sites. This not only gives us article ideas; it also helps a lot with Daily Links, produced more than once a day on most days.
It might be worth starting with the more familiar example of "Linux", as it is closer to home. That's not to say the problem is limited to just one "domain" (as in field, not Web domain). It's getting worse globally, across languages and sites, no matter the topic. We'll come to that in a moment.
This morning my wife told me that Kevin Purdy had decided to help Hans Reiser, who is a monster, write articles from prison. I've already mentioned my thoughts about this in an editorial comment ("Conde Nast giving a voice to a wife murderer in prison while the staff of that [Ars Technica] site is also arrested (raping kids, Peter Bright). 'Journalism' associating Linux with murder [1, 2]"). She knew I dismissively wrote about Phoronix doing the same. Was this clickbait or being tactless by intention? It takes very basic judgement and social skills to prioritise other "stories" rather than the words of a madman speaking from prison. Calling it a social problem also belittles the act of chopping one's wife to pieces.
Looking elsewhere for some actual news about Linux (not Phoronix rewriting git commit messages and mailing list messages), I must confess it has gotten hard. We already track nearly 1,000 Linux-related blogs/sites and some sites we check manually due to them not having RSS feeds. Yesterday I noticed that Steven Vaughan-Nichols' (SJVN) personal blog has been MIA (missing in action) since November 06, 2023. Over the years he had several personal blogs and social control media accounts. They tend to vanish at the end, including the Google+ account and then Diaspora. FOSS Force too has published nothing (MIA) since December 20, 2023, i.e. one month ago. You can see the general trend.
Last month we wrote about MakeUseOf (MUO) abolishing its Linux coverage [1, 2] and not even responding to an amicable query about that. Did the company that had killed MUO also put Dave McKay on hiatus (in the sister site)? Nothing in a fortnight from him... and counting. He used to cover "Linux" things almost every day. Now it's 2 articles in a month (the latter being more than 2 weeks ago).
MUO is part of a network of sites in which McKay works. Their coverage of "Linux" has, in general, decreased a lot this year. All their sites are affected by this [1, 2, 3] and it's a shame because they used to make decent reports and HowTos.
Asking around if other people experienced the same thing I was getting immediate nods. Basically I asked around, is it just me, or was substance in news dying/dead for 2-3 days now? Ryan Farmer said the same about CNN, noting that they had almost no news. That's like the most visited news site in the US or one of the top 3.
The news has been so slow lately (not related to MLK Day - that was almost a week ago!) that last night, a Friday, I did tasks I typically cannot get around to until early Monday (morning/afternoon).
"It seems that there is a lot less news content and what took 1.5 - 2 hours now takes 4 or so," an associate says. "The digging takes more time and effort, but the results are less than before."
"The media has become stenography and just 'he says / she says' in place of actual reporting."
This kind of "reporting" leads to misinformation and misconceptions becoming more widespread; you just need some "X" (formerly Twitter) account to "play ball", no matter or irrespective of your qualifications on the subject, the context, or whether it's true (or if it gets "likes").
Mainstream media has, in effect, gravitated towards becoming "glorified" social control media. It is also divisive because that tends to attract more clicks/interaction. They take non-controversial issues and make them inflammatory.
"There's a reason for that," the associate says, as "they've substituted visits to social control media sites for investigative reporting. Don't forget the loss of funding caused by getting tricked by Zuckerberg's pivot to video fake."
Facebook said, "pivot to video", then pivot to "metaverse" (VR with new buzzwords), and now it's pivot to chaff/generative crap (G.A.I.) that's just a waste of money, both the hardware purchases and the energy consumed. How long for can shareholders be conned into funding that?
"So much of the problem lies directly with Zuckerberg," the associate argues, "the rest with social control media in general. Then there are outright weapons like Bytedance's TikTok."
We're meanwhile noticed that many Invidious instances went offline, almost coinciding with the news of YouTube layoffs. That monopolistic platform, YouTube, is rotting as it tries to imitate TikTok with "#shorts" and Linux-centric YouTubers make worthless 30-second clips instead of detailed videos (like they used to).
Not a good time to be a neophile (lover of news). █