Most Readers Don't Like Customized News 107
An anonymous reader writes "Despite the push by organizations such as Google and Yahoo!, a recent study found not everyone is a fan of web-based customization for news. The researchers defined customization as when the user gets to choose specific topics to read on a daily basis. Instead, some prefer personalization. This is when the system chooses content based on a reader's past choices. 'The obvious assumption is people would like more control over what they read,' Sundar said. 'We found when it came to evaluating new stories and quality of content, customization was the preferred method for power users. If you were not a power user, you wanted the system to tailor the news for you.'"
I don't want any customization (Score:5, Interesting)
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I disliked it when Google changed up (Score:4, Insightful)
it fouled up my reading to no end. From the different layouts to it choosing stuff it thought I wanted over others. I prefer the old version much better. I am more likely to visit sites like DrudgeReport which throw it all up there and I pick and choose with ease instead of trying to figure out where something I might want to read went. I bounce between CNN/FOX to get all the stories afterward and then back to google's news collector.
Its getting to the point where my local newspaper's website, with its lack of customization is much more readable. With customization I am never sure what I miss.
Re:I disliked it when Google changed up (Score:5, Insightful)
This is exactly why I don't want customization nor personalization.
Just because I'm interested in Tech and World news doesn't mean that I want news there to push aside a piece of news I'd be interested in on a topic I don't normally read.
Re:I disliked it when Google changed up (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, there's always more news than there's time. Usually most people do it by reading some general sources and some specialized sources in the topics that interest them, what these customs news are trying to offer is to be your one-stop shop for all your needs. Reading a specialist source like "news for nerds" instead of reading more general news that might have interested you is also a form of "pushing them aside".
What I find annoying is that the filters tend to be too absolute. Its fine that I have preferences, but even if I'm not huge on sports I might like to catch some headlines. I'm not into celebs but it might be nice to not have the deer-in-headlights look saying "Paris who?". Even though I don't need to hear of every bowel movement on the stock market I like to know where the economy is going. For me to really use it, there's have to be a less/more slider with articles getting ranked by importance. I imagine that is why the "guessing" algorithm is better, I bet it's not so absolute as most crude checkbox selections I've seen.
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It's OK, she had that look herself in "One Night In Paris". So I'm told.
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it fouled up my reading to no end. From the different layouts to it choosing stuff it thought I wanted over others. I prefer the old version much better. I am more likely to visit sites like DrudgeReport which throw it all up there and I pick and choose with ease instead of trying to figure out where something I might want to read went. I bounce between CNN/FOX to get all the stories afterward and then back to google's news collector.
It's like this latest remodel of google news has thrown away all the good parts, specifically:
1) The mostly random nature of the articles and publishers grouped by category on the front page (i.e. sports, world politics and business sections)
2) Density of the layout - I get lot less headlines to pick from than I used to
I don't even let google set a cookie or use javascript so I assume its gotta be even worse for 'normal' users.
FWIW, the current layout reminds a lot of the old Nando Times news website which
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I come to slashdot for the selection bias.
Just the right mix of inflamitory and inaccurate headlines, and apple slashvertisments. It's my two minute hate.
Re:I don't want any customization (Score:4, Interesting)
And all the goatse links a man could ever want.
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Slashdot comments: 99% crap, 1% good.
Sounds like most everything else, honestly.
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Heh heh, he said tool.
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depends on your personality
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In what way am I biased if I filter out all "news" pertaining to the World Cup or Lady Gaga?
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I intentionally visit salon.com and foxnews.com back-to-back to make sure I've covered both extremes.
I completely agree with you ( I do the same - visiting CNN, Reuters, and Fox to cover all sides). But I don't think that's what they mean by "customization". I want Google to show me World and Business news. If there's a Sports story I might care about I'll seek it out, and I don't give a crap about Entertainment, so I customized Google to lower the priority on those categories.
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I disagree. Fox News' tagline is "fair & balanced", while People's World about us page says "We enjoy a special relationship with the Communist Party USA, founded in 1919, and publish its news and views."
One is honest about its bias, the other isn't.
drudge (Score:1)
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The goal of hearing both sides isn't to blindly pick the median; sometimes one side of the story is much more convincing than the other, other times there isn't even much overlap in what stories they choose to report on. But without variety it's hard to know you're covering all the bases, and informed enough to choose sides (or a middle position
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Although you'll get different interpretations of the same talking points by sampling polarizing US media, it's doubtful you'll get any different, tenable pieces of information from the endeavor.
I believe that the most important interpretation and view point regarding a current event at the end of the day is your own. Instead of juggling interpretations of the same data provided by journalists who are all working under the same framework, I find it more useful to juggle opposing accounts and data.
To do so yo
I like news for nerds (Score:2)
It's the stuff that matters.
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Personalisation (Score:3, Interesting)
I have no problems with personalisation, which I take (based on the article's pretty unclear description) is where the system tries to predict news stories based on what you read in the past. However, I do have problems with the personalisation algorithms used. I get useless news articles that I would never have actually read, while the system hides stories I might actually be interested in.
Until the personalisation algorithms used by news sites surpass my ability to filter news that I read, I'll probably not use any sort of personalised news site.
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Agreed.
A mathematical model is just that: a model. Not an exact duplicate, but an estimation, and approximation. I'll filter my news myself, thank you very much.
Professors of communications... (Score:3, Insightful)
Why does the title "Professor of Communications" sound like "Bullshit Artist Extraordinare" to my ears?
People love personalized news. Most folks I know get their news from Google News or other customizable news aggregators for just such a reason - it is a digest that you can edit so you are only seeing stories that matter to you. For example, I don't care about sports or entertainment. Lindsay Lohan's trials and tribulations, and big 'roided out athletes beating their mammas, are just not important. I also do not enjoy getting AP or Reuters news - neither can really be trusted after all their fuckups and propaganda plants. However I do enjoy getting news from abroad and Google lets me do this.
Professors of Communications are the people we can blame for the sorry, shabby state of the media today. Infotainment is the name of the game thanks to these bastards and their corporate overlords.
Re:Professors of communications... (Score:4, Interesting)
Read TFA or even the summary - while people love personalized news, according to TFA most don't like or want to do the customization themselves - so system where you can customize/select/configure news types as you describe is inconvenient, but only a system that guesses your preferences automagically based on your clicks, behavior, whatever is seen as desirable.
And I entirely agree with the professor. I have strong preferences for various news types, but I can't be bothered to manually customize even the slashdot article categories.
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Well then you don't want personalized news. You may like the idea of it, but if you actually wanted it, you would arrange it.
I did read TFA. He's bullshitting about power users and nattering on about irrelevant crap. It's not exactly rocket science to click a few checkboxes after punching the big friendly "Customize" button.
If the news is automatically personalized, you may never find out about important stories. And if you click on a story that mildly interests you (say gays in the military) you might
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Bollocks. There is nothing contradictory about wanting something and not acting on it. I want a shorter drive to work. I also want the job I have, want my partner to have a shorter drive etc. I weigh up the options, make a value judgement and keep my current drive. None of this makes the fact I want a shorter drive to work false.
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mod parent +1 insightful (Score:2)
it's practically a design pattern in political rhetoric
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Because the whole article basically can be summed up as: "THIS JUST IN: Users prefer doing less work!"
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Because otherwise you couldn't justify your "I know better than any actual professor, never mind I've neither conducted studies nor have any statistics, I just know better regardless" rant. And without that rant, you can't get in your karma whoring slam at the media.
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Yes, let us all sing praises for the media. Where would we be without them?
I've found (Score:2)
Power user? (Score:3, Interesting)
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What sets a power user (as far as news-reading is concerned) from your "typical" user?
If you prefer to customize, you are a power user. So "customization was the preferred method for power users" really says nothing.
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WTF is a "power user"?
A power user is somebody who has the power to power-read content powered by powerful software.
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Usually, for me, a "power user" is someone that doesn't go "ohhhhhhh" when I press enter, instead of clicking "ok", or when I press "tab" and the cursor "magically" changes fields...
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A power user, if I may take you seriously for a moment, is generally people who populate slashdot. They are people who know more than ctrl-c and ctrl-v to copy and paste. They might be aware they're using a Macintosh, and therefore substitute a command key for the control. If you ask them to press the 'print screen' button they don't look at you blankly. They've heard of it, even if they've never seen it. If they're a Macintosh user, they'll never see it, but nevertheless they know enough to tell you they h
Who would've thunk.. (Score:4, Funny)
"Not every one is a fan of option x", "some prefer option y".
Different people prefer different things? This is truly revolutionary news. Quick, someone make more than one flavor of ice cream!
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Different people prefer different things? This is truly revolutionary news. Quick, someone make more than one flavor of ice cream!
You can have any flavor you like as long as it's vanilla.
Icecream (Score:2)
Sure. How about garlic?
That was a surprising twist (Score:2)
my first thought was "of course, people don't want to have the topics of the news they read manipulated, they want to get samples from everything current!". I guess I should stop overestimating them.
News for nerds, stuff that matters. (Score:1)
News sites are about what is important to everyone (Score:1)
I read the news to know what is news as much as to know what is going on.
If I am reading what someone / a recommendation engine thinks I want to see, it defeats the purpose of feeling out the pulse of the public. If I want something different, something tailored, I will seek it out by joining a community such as slashdot, identi.ca or some other community that curates information for me. I go to the Nytimes, CNN and to google news to see the IE6 / windows 98 version of the news, so I can tell what the he
I would prefer an exclusion filter (Score:2)
Give me everything according to what's currently generally newsworthy
Except, leave out:
- Celebrity, Paris Hilton (the person, not the building)
- American Football, Basketball, Baseball, Car Racing
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Yeah. I hear the building is really hard to get into.
Customization/Personalization := Tracking (Score:2)
I don't use any of the customization or personalization features of the news sites I visit, simply because to do so requires me to be tracked by the site, and I don't wish to provide ANY site with any more data about me than I must.
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You're already telling them what you like by clicking on the news you find interesting. And for "personalization" as defined by the article, that's all they need.
one problem with online news (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd be pleased just to get rid of all the anonymous commenting on most news sites. The level of nastiness leveled by pretty much anyone commenting on sites like Yahoo News is just mindblowing. Anonymous web commenting has gotten so out of hand, someone even made a firefox plugin to filter it! [mozilla.org]
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I'd be pleased just to get rid of all the anonymous commenting on most news sites. The level of nastiness leveled by pretty much anyone commenting on sites like Yahoo News is just mindblowing. Anonymous web commenting has gotten so out of hand, someone even made a firefox plugin to filter it! [mozilla.org]
You're wrong because you're ugly!
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Anonymous web commenting has gotten so out of hand, someone even made a firefox plugin to filter it!
Such irony that the comments section for that plugin are full of spam.
Perhaps the plugin author doesn't know it's there because his filter is on.
They're the most honest comments. (Score:1, Funny)
The anonymous comments are usually the most honest, and truly reflect what the poster is thinking, even if the views expressed may hurt your fragile emotions.
It makes perfect sense why people might get "nasty" regarding certain topics. In such cases, there's usually a serious problem at hand.
Take software developed in India, for example. When that topic comes up here, you'll probably see comments you consider "nasty", posted by "Anonymous Cowards". If you actually bothered to listen to what was being said,
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The Invisible Hand will sort everything out, do not worry child.
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Anonymous?
I read a local newspaper where a non-anonymous guy gives his worthless comment on each and every article they post. I might install Greasemonkey just to filter out that moron.
Or maybe a time-of-importance ranking (Score:3, Interesting)
First, give me stuff that will affect all of humanity for a time period of 50 years or more,
then, stuff that affects everyone everywhere for about 5 to 10 years
1-2 years
then getting more local (my nation or region, my city or local region)
I should be able to flip which is more important, the effect-time or the geographic scale,
and be able to flip the order I care more about in terms of local, state, national, regional, global
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Kudos!
Laziness (Score:1)
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I prefer customization vs personalization (Score:2)
Seems that personalization uses some sort of Bayes slope and eventually all the "choices" that I make on what to read ends up in the Entertainment section somewhere because I clicked on a link for Linux kernel and because Lady Gaga wore a carmine fez one day, my news feed starts showing content related to Twilight premieres in France.
I have keywords ("camping hiking" "restaurant review broward" "heather graham") because that's the only news I care about. So far so good...
Filtering (Score:1)
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Must... resist..!
I'm not fond of the idea.... (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think I like the idea of computerized customization of what news I see. I think for real news, the question shouldn't be "is this a topic I'm already interested in?" because maybe you'd be interested if someone informed you about it. The real question is, "Is this important?" I don't see myself ever trusting a computer very far in determining what's important.
Of course, the problem is that the people at news organizations are also doing a terrible job of determining what's important. News organizations are focused on things like Farmville, Lindsay Lohan, the newest viral video to become a big hit, and the latest Twitter buzz. Honestly, even if you do care about those things, you probably shouldn't.
Not that they should prevent you from learning about these things, or even completely fail to cover them, but I feel like media outlets are really failing to keep a sense of priority and a sense of perspective.
Polarization (Score:5, Interesting)
I think having the system automatically personalize your news based on prior viewing history is bad for society. Right now in both Canada and the U.S.A. there is increasingly extreme polarization between conservatives and liberal (R versus D in the 'States). Granted people view what is of interest to them but when they are served ONLY news pages based on the articles they normally view, they never get the chance to see a different view point. Sure they can search for it if they want, but out of sight generally means out of mind. This can only lead to increasing polarization.
I believe one of the insidious dangers of the web is that it allows people to not only associate with those of like ideas, but to focus those ideas/ideals. science fiction author Gordon R. Dickson explored this idea in his Dorsai books. His idea was that if man were to be able to migrate to different star systems, those with like minds would choose to locate together. In his books, there ended up being planets of mostly agnostic scientists, mostly philosophers, religious fanatics, etc. And all with strong feelings towards their own doctrines. As they isolate themselves, the stronger their ideologies become. I see the internet facilitating this on our one and only planet and within countries, and often pan-nationally. People with like interests form groups on the internet, associate with proportionally more people in those groups on the internet, and become very entrenched in those ideas (i.e. closely interact proportionally more with internet friends than than they would with real people they meet in the 'real world') . Before the internet we had no choice but to interact only with real people who generally had a wider range of ideas and ideals.
While the internet is generally a good thing, I think the biggest danger of it is the polarization of society. Helping people to only see one view point is only contributing to this negative aspect. I wonder if it would help to instead of only choosing similar news viewpoints to what people normally look at, to make sure the system automatically presents at least a few news stories reflecting something different. i.e. Provide choices of what people generally view, but always show a few alternatives so that perhaps they might choose them occasionally and the system doesn't spiral the viewer into say radical right or radical left wing only ideologies in the news that is presented to them.
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Picking the news outlet you agree with is a sure way of getting a slanted view of the world. Here's a story that made the rounds a couple of days ago, Obama answering the question about his faith. See if you can pick the outlet from the way they present the story. Choices (not in order are): AP, Fox, NPR, USAToday, CNN, US News & World Report
Outlet #1: These guys leave no doubt what they want you to think. "Christian Bona Fides"?
A woman threw the president a slow-pitch of a question — "Why are you a Christian? she asked.
That allowed Obama to once again state his Christian bona fides in an attempt to beat back the Doubting Thomases, including those who insist he's a Muslim
Outlet #2: This one seems unbiased to me...
An event billed as a discussion on the economy turned personal Tuesday when a woman asked President Barack Obama about his Christian faith and views on abortion.
Outlet #3: More opinion than
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You must be young. When you've been around for a while, you've already heard all those "other points of view". I certainly have, and I can tell you that seeing them is now little more than annoying. People would call it being "close-minded", which really just means "someone whose brain we can't easily stuff with our opinions". In reality it's just a difference in the core values; there is nothing you can say to change my opinion because my opinion is based on what I deeply believe is right. The polarization
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I wouldn't call myself old, but I think young folks wouldn't call me young. I watched the moon landings on TV when I was really young... give you an idea?
Granted there are times when we all encounter opposing points of view and have this feeling. It is just plain sad when that is all a person believes whenever they see an opposing opinion. Generally I believe that means that person is either incapable of or will have a great deal of difficu
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You are missing the point. Seeing other people's opinions does not change my mind, and neither should they change yours. A logical mind bases its opinions on facts, not on what other people think. Once you have the facts you need, you can form an opinion. From that point on, other people's opinions are either right (if they agree with yours) or wrong (if they don't). This is not going to change unless you get new information that invalidates your prior arguments. If the subject is important to you and you h
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I see where you are coming from. You are right, opinions shouldn't change your mind, however the facts behind why a person has those opinions should be able to. A better way to say might be that if you are sometimes open to listening to someone's opinions you then have the opportunity to examine why they have them. And if possible do it in the way Descartes proposed. Leave your own beliefs for a minute so that you objectively check the facts behind what they are talking about. Facts. Facts and the conclusio
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Look at a thread which includes any of the following and you will see diametrically opposed opinions: gun control, Christianity, copyright law, Apple Computers, abortion, health care, any programming language (except COBOL, which is obviously evil), law and order, free speech, Linux (kidding, only one acceptable attitude here), France and evolution.
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Stupid. (Score:2)
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Sure if you filter on the bias of the author - which is far more likely to be done without a filter.
But if I decide I don't want to see articles about "The Kardasians" but I do want to see articles about "restaurants in Manhattan" and "the economy" and about "Federal politics", how is that going to going to turn me into a closed-minded bigot.
Yes a netflix style "you liked these articles so you'll like these" has that potential but simple category filters is a different ball game. Am I closed-minded bigot be
Story title written by total idiot - did not rtfa (Score:1, Insightful)
"you wanted the system to tailor the news for you"
End of story. Holy shit who would have guessed.
iGoogle vs Google News (Score:2)
I have an iGoogle page with a number (25 at the moment) of selected RSS feeds in boxes (but no hamster gadget). Several of these are news feeds (general news, NY Times, BBC, Al Jazeera), some are tech (slashdot...), others are just interesting stuff (metafilter...). I guess this is customization (as opposed to personalization) and it works for me.
I used to have Google News open more or less permanently in a tab, but since their new look this summer, it has become less than useful for me and I don't
they're just doing it wrong (Score:3, Interesting)
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Pandora needs that option, too.
You hear that, Pandora? Just because someone likes Heavy Metal doesn't mean they want some double-digit IQ primate howling in their ears about resurrecting Hitler!
Insert obligatory privacy warning here (Score:2)
See title.
I will admit, though, as far as all of the things ISPs and other entities track, news preferences are noticeably lower on the chart. Still...
Speak for yourself (Score:2)
Hmm... (Score:1)
I want MORE customization (Score:1)
I'm a bit OCD, and I subscribe to over 100 RSS feeds to get all my news. My biggest complaint is that it's hard to filter out the irrelevant articles from the interesting ones, because most sites only have one feed and I can't filter by tags :(