[HN Gopher] A group of Motherboard folks just spun up their own ...
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A group of Motherboard folks just spun up their own new independent
outlet
Author : ohjeez
Score : 227 points
Date : 2023-08-23 15:09 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.404media.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.404media.co)
| treve wrote:
| I _almost_ immediately closed the window because I thought it was
| 404ing and it was a dead link. Curious how much traffic they 'll
| accidentally lose with this name.
|
| Coincidentally my company was called 'Bad Gateway', and there's a
| company near me called 200 OK so welcome to the club =)
| kornhole wrote:
| I signed up as paying member. These are some of the good
| journalists who need encouragement to go independent. Hopefully
| now that they are free of billionaire benefactors, they will not
| need to weave in partisan attacks and other mandatory messages.
| pixxel wrote:
| > These are some of the good journalists who need encouragement
| to go independent.
|
| Agreed.
|
| > Hopefully now that they are free of billionaire benefactors,
| they will not need to weave in partisan attacks and other
| mandatory messages.
|
| These types that are deceitful, immoral and tear society apart
| with their paymaster propaganda don't deserve another position
| of trust.
| kornhole wrote:
| >These types that are deceitful, immoral and tear society
| apart with their paymaster propaganda don't deserve another
| position of trust.
|
| You are fortunate if you have never needed to do anything
| against your principles because your job required it. I have
| worked for companies I am not proud of. I am giving them the
| benefit of the doubt and a chance to use their new found
| independence for good. If they fuck it up, I won't renew
| membership.
| mgbmtl wrote:
| Congrats! I'm a fan and subscribed.
|
| Tech nitpick: I was a bit annoyed though that the green buttons
| to subscribe are then replaced by green buttons to "gift to a
| friend" or subscribe to newsletter. It's easy to add to uBlock,
| but it would be nice to not have annoyances that distract from
| reading. I really like the long form of articles.
| solardev wrote:
| Brave move. I hope they succeed.
|
| PS Does The Information still exist?
| tamimio wrote:
| [flagged]
| 71a54xd wrote:
| This looks cool, but I wonder if this kind of tech journalism
| still really has an audience?
| jkoebler wrote:
| We know that it has an audience because millions of people read
| our journalism at Motherboard every month. We are making a bet
| that a small fraction of those people will be willing to pay
| for accountability journalism and offbeat stuff that people
| care about (porn, for one, but lots other things) but that
| might make advertisers nervous.
|
| We are under no illusion that this will be easy but we are
| excited to give it a shot. The worst thing that can happen is
| that we tried our best on something we really believe in and
| enjoy doing, it doesn't work financially, and we ultimately
| have to go do something else. We are hopeful and optimistic
| that we CAN make it work, but already we are overwhelmed and
| thrilled with the response. It's only our second day but we're
| committed to becoming a vital publication for people who care
| about how tech impacts humans, and how humans impact tech. We
| understand we will need to prove this day in and day out for
| people to feel like they are getting their money's worth, or
| that their money is supporting a force for good in the
| world/the internet. But we really want to make that happen.
| Thanks for the kind words
| ajdude wrote:
| I wish you guys the best of luck. We seriously need more
| independent journalism that isn't stuck in a race to the
| bottom. I just subscribed.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| Based on the top Substack authors, there is an audience willing
| to pay $5/mo for low effort opinions based on other people's
| investigations.
|
| In a sense ProPublica won. Its mission is to do real
| investigative journalism and get as many people to hear about it
| as possible. They are _winning_ when people take their X and
| repackage it into dumbed down Y. They coexist with the low effort
| Substack ecosystem.
|
| Even if zero people pay for 404 Media, who is going to be like,
| "oh man, these guys cracked open the Right to Repair story, I
| should hire them." That sounds like teeing yourself for content
| marketing at iFixit at worse, Microsoft at best. Why?
| jeffgreco wrote:
| What?
| [deleted]
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| I used to really like Motherboard, so I'm rooting for them.
|
| I haven't been totally happy with my tech newsfeed the past while
| but I'm clutching onto my Defector subscription for all that it's
| worth. I hope they can make this work similarly.
| i_am_jl wrote:
| I was super confused while I was reading the story posted here
| yesterday regarding ID theft via credit reports; it's a quality
| piece but I couldn't stop asking myself "where the hell did 404
| Media come from?"
|
| Excited to see where this goes.
| jkoebler wrote:
| Thanks for reading! Lots more to come :)
| [deleted]
| Humboldtsnee wrote:
| What does that mean in this context?
| askura wrote:
| All the best to them. I was involved with a few Vice projects in
| 2011-2014 and it was honestly leadership that let them down. They
| have great talent but it's not easy in this day and age to run
| any kind of content site.
|
| Hope they pull it off.
| nickthegreek wrote:
| Good luck to them but $100/yr sub is the cheapest tier. oof!
| googlryas wrote:
| $100 sounds much worse than phrasing it as 27 cents a day.
|
| (cue cheesy music): "For just a quarter a day, you can save a
| struggling journalist from corporate overlords, submarine PR
| pieces, and human interest stories"
| frumper wrote:
| 27 cents a day sounds worse to me. You typically can't pay
| for 1 day, so it's not really true.
| jzb wrote:
| If anybody has the magic formula for pricing, I'd be all
| ears. Yeah, $100 a year seems steep - but OTOH are twice as
| many people going to subscribe for $50? Five times as many
| for $20? (Or more...)
|
| I don't know what the answer / formula is, but I pay more
| than that per year for my LWN.net subscription and for a few
| other publications. Less than that for others, but I really
| don't know what the "right" level would be to maximize
| revenue so they're able to pay themselves a decent salary and
| keep the lights on.
| doctorwho42 wrote:
| Cheaper than being owned by a billionaire, it just is a
| visible cost not external cost.
| patmorgan23 wrote:
| Less than $10/month
| autoexec wrote:
| Still more per month than a netflix account.
| OGWhales wrote:
| *Ad-supported Netflix account.
|
| Ad-free Netflix is more expensive.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| Ah yes, Netflix, the noted journalism company
| autoexec wrote:
| Netflix the contender for our limited attention and only
| one of an ever growing number of subscriptions whose cost
| needs to be justified. I'm guessing a streaming service,
| even one with netflix's catalogue, is going to provide a
| lot more bang for your buck in terms of minutes of
| quality content per dollar.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Netflix has nothing to do with newspapers or other
| digital content and services that aren't video streaming.
|
| People seem to make the comparison only because the
| things are accessed by using a screen, which seems to be
| a very simple perspective. Just because Netflix is a
| great bargain (for those who like their content), doesn't
| mean you can conclude that everything else is expensive.
| dahwolf wrote:
| Value for money and value for time will apply regardless.
|
| Both entertainment and reading in-depth paid news are one
| and the same: luxuries one does in their (typically)
| scarce spare time using an (often) modest budget.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| That's not my attitude to paid news at all. Quality news
| are often essential in order to understand things that
| are happening in your vicinity, that will have a direct
| impact on your life and on the life of people close to
| you. It is not necessarily about entertainment or wasting
| some time. Mostly low quality news media will have a
| focus on entertaining.
|
| If we use Netflix as a benchmark, you shouldn't spend
| money on anything except for on Netflix, since almost
| nothing gives the same amount of hours of use per cent
| paid. Exceptions for lightbulbs, which are not that
| entertaining to watch.
|
| I think most people sometimes go out for a drink, a meal,
| or a coffee - without agonizing much about the price,
| even though you could get many days glued to Netflix for
| the same price as that drink with friends.
| selectodude wrote:
| Means they need to average 4200 subscribers to pay themselves
| and run the place.
| jzb wrote:
| Assuming hosting costs, credit card fees, etc. - $420,000 a
| year for 4 people doesn't sound like enough.
| Humboldtsnee wrote:
| That said, it's going to actual workers who actually do the
| journalism.
|
| Supporting 404 feels better than sending money to some corp
| where it gets pocketed by the c suite.
| iterminate wrote:
| I wrote a long a comment theorising why $100/year is a great
| starting point and then discovered you can toggle between
| "yearly" and "monthly". So they do offer $10/month -- it's
| just hidden behind a toggle.
| wffurr wrote:
| You mean I can also choose $120/year?
|
| No comment on whether either is reasonable but responding
| to "it costs too much" with a _more expensive_ option is an
| interesting choice.
| kup0 wrote:
| Only viewing total cost misses the point. For some
| people, it may be more reasonable for them to want to pay
| a fraction of the cost monthly vs. one big sum every 12
| months. $10/month is more expensive, in total, over a
| year. However, $100 is more expensive in the short-term.
|
| Also, paying monthly is only more expensive if the person
| paying decides to stay that long. Monthly payments allow
| flexibility to cancel rather than committing to a year.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Let's imagine you need to read a certain story, but don't
| care to become a long-term subscriber. The $10 for a
| month option fits that use.
| shortformblog wrote:
| I just want to personally vouch for Jason and company as being
| solid folks who do great work. I have freelanced for Motherboard
| for 7+ years and Jason and/or Emanuel worked with me on about 90
| percent of my stories over that time, which included extremely
| weird things like a step-by-step for Hackintoshing a laptop that
| ended up far longer than any of us were expecting, and a deep
| dive into the backstory of NESticle.
|
| They are truly great at what they do, and I'm excited to see what
| comes of it now that they have their own plot on the open
| internet.
| skilled wrote:
| The site is built with Ghost[0] and subscriptions are managed by
| Outpost[1].
|
| Design is clean, loads fast, and articles are stacked, so I wish
| them luck. It's pretty ruthless out there, but a few good stories
| on HN front-page[2] should at least get this syndicated in all
| the best places.
|
| [0]: https://ghost.org/ (they've also forgotten to change the
| default article:publisher URL which leads to Ghost's FB page)
|
| [1]: https://outpost.pub/
|
| [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37222672
| theonlybutlet wrote:
| Wow, and they're off to a dramatic start. Actually had to close
| an article, was a bit much for me.
| phatfish wrote:
| One of the 3 on AI porn? I get they need clicks but maybe drip
| feed them over a month or something.
| josefresco wrote:
| $100/year to subscribe FYI
| dylan604 wrote:
| 100% off topic, but something that made me laugh. The caption
| under the image of the founders: "The founders of 404 Media. From
| left to right..."
|
| So as a question, is Joseph to the left of Samantha in that
| image? This image is perfect for training data for VAR offside
| decisions.
| jkoebler wrote:
| We actually saw that our name has confused this AI news site:
| https://twitter.com/ShortFormErnie/status/169403708675025348...
| So maybe the whole thing is a test for GAI and machine
| learning.
| skilled wrote:
| Hahaha that is gold.
| jkoebler wrote:
| Hey there, Jason from 404 Media here. We're humbled that someone
| posted this and just wanted to say I'll stick around for an hour
| or so before I have a few interviews for articles scheduled, if
| anyone has any questions/thoughts/feedback. We're very grateful
| for the support and thrilled to be here
| 363849473754 wrote:
| Do you plan to do any investigative pieces on AI alignment? I'd
| be interested in a piece that interviewed people like Paul
| Christino, Eliezer Yudkowsky, Chris Olah and the like. Covering
| opposing views from doomerism to e/acc.
| jkoebler wrote:
| AI will be one of our core coverage areas and I'm sure we
| will be doing pieces both short and in-depth on AI alignment,
| doomerism, optimism, etc.
| 037 wrote:
| Wow, the full article in the RSS summary... I'm deeply touched.
| It reminds me of an old, not hostile web. Maybe it's a
| configuration error, in which case thanks for the experience :D
| lagniappe wrote:
| I hope it's not an error. This is how the web was when it was
| at its best. I hope this is a trend that continues.
| monetus wrote:
| How long of a process is it, give or take, for you all to
| publish an article? Give us a behind the scenes? Thanks for the
| site! I like the aesthetics.
| jkoebler wrote:
| This fully fully depends on the article. We want to respect
| our readers' time, so while we love doing big investigations,
| it's a lot to ask people to ONLY read 2,000-5,000-word
| articles about complicated topics. We want to have a lot of
| short posts that are insightful or about the news. So, for
| example, this was a breaking story I did yesterday:
|
| https://www.404media.co/biden-administration-changes-mind-
| sa...
|
| This article took me 20-30 minutes to write, edit, and
| publish. It's still news, but it's more of an update on
| something I've covered and written about literally hundreds
| of times before. So I am providing some of the context about
| the decision that I can recite from memory (I check the
| specifics, of course), telling people what's new, and
| providing them the document.
|
| This article I published earlier today, meanwhile, is
| something I've been poking along on for weeks, talked to a
| lot of sources on, read a lot of academic papers on, etc.
|
| https://www.404media.co/instagram-ads-illegal-content-
| drugs-...
|
| At Motherboard our main way of operating was to always have a
| big investigation or narrative feature going on in the
| background, but to be on the lookout for news or timely
| things to do that align with our "beats" (the things we cover
| day-to-day, the topics we know inside and out). Usually
| features are something that you poke along on for weeks or
| months and go through a very rigorous back-and-forth editing
| process.
|
| FOIA stuff can "take" months or years, but often very little
| of that is active work time. The way that works is you file a
| request, wait for the agency to respond, and bug them a bunch
| when they miss deadlines or don't respond. I've had FOIA
| requests returned the same day, and I've had others returned
| five years after I file them.
|
| Good question!
| tentacleuno wrote:
| > https://www.404media.co/biden-administration-changes-
| mind-sa...
|
| On LibreWolf, the scrolling is really messed up on this
| page, and on the home page. Out of curiosity, are you
| Rolling Your Own Scrolling(TM)? That's generally a no-no.
| slim wrote:
| what's your cms ?
| jonchurch_ wrote:
| Guessing by the 'Ghost-Fastly' header in the response, I'd
| say Ghost.
|
| Edit: Oh there's also plenty of references in the HTML, as
| well as it literally saying "Published with Ghost" in the
| footer which I just noticed haha
|
| https://404-media.ghost.io/ redirects to the main 404media
| site, as well.
| hoppyhoppy2 wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37237722
| TradingPlaces wrote:
| Right into my veins
|
| >Much has been written about the failing business model of new
| media. We have watched how new media companies fail, and it's
| not because of a lack of audience, revenue, impact, or vital
| work. New media companies fail because of a growth-at-any-cost
| mentality, and venture capital investments made at absurd
| valuations. Most importantly, astronomical overhead costs make
| it impossible for journalists to out-earn the cost of expensive
| office space, the ever-changing whims of management,
| executives' salaries, the cost of unnecessary enterprise
| software, and an endless parade of consultants brought in to
| figure out what's wrong.
|
| >It doesn't have to be this way, and at 404 Media, it will not.
| We propose a simple alternative: pay journalists to do
| journalism.
|
| Also, y u no Mastodon?
| jkoebler wrote:
| We're going to join Mastodon I promise. Honestly the reason
| we haven't joined Mastodon yet is because there have been a
| million little things to adjust/fix in the days leading up to
| launch to make sure the site didn't break, to edit the
| stories, get art done, backend business stuff as well.
|
| There are a lot of things we wanted to launch with that we
| haven't had time to do yet, which doesn't mean it's not a
| priority. As you can imagine we've had a few (very minor)
| urgent fires in the leadup to launch, so tbh our social media
| accounts across the board have taken a temporary backseat.
| Mastodon is high on our list and I'm sure we'll be there by
| the end of the week if not the end of the day.
|
| Thank you for your support!
| TradingPlaces wrote:
| [flagged]
| b59831 wrote:
| [dead]
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| I mean, they clearly have thought about it. And provided
| reasons why they haven't done it yet, and even gave a
| timeline as short as end of day.
|
| Did you even read the comment you replied to?
| TradingPlaces wrote:
| This was not about Mastodon. It was a general comment
| about X and the fact that journalists have not abandoned
| it en masse for reasons that should be obvious to anyone
| paying attention by this point. They remain on X. They
| took control of their publishing, and I would recommend
| taking control of their social by running their own
| ActivityPub server instead of relying on enshittified
| platforms who are not their friends, and who view them as
| the enemy. I'm surprised that every news org hasn't
| already done this.
| nickthegreek wrote:
| I feel like journos & editors are single-handedly keeping
| X afloat, as they need and crave what is offers. Its a
| tough and abusively relationship that I, like you, feel
| they need to break away from. However, at the same time I
| do how their businesses might suffer from it. Tough
| situation.
| TradingPlaces wrote:
| They handed control of their audience to platforms
| without thinking about where that could lead. Now they
| are in a tough spot. But starting a new venture by
| doubling down on that twenty-teens mistake seems to
| especially ignore the history
| user_named wrote:
| Sounds like there's lots of overhead.
| smcleod wrote:
| This is absolutely spot on. It's refreshing to see.
| mewse-hn wrote:
| Peanut gallery reporting in. It always felt sort of weird that
| vice had a technology section, but I think there is space for
| tech coverage with a more edgy slant (eg. Beto O'Rourke and his
| hacker background).
|
| Why would you name your website after a website error code?
| Appreciate the easter egg on the actual 404 page.
|
| Not really direct feedback but when the Verge launched they
| made a big splash with in-depth, long form stories like "Pre to
| postmortem: the inside story of the death of Palm and webOS"
| from 2012. I hope you guys could dig up some stories like this,
| and your commitment to filing FOIA requests seems promising.
| jkoebler wrote:
| Naming the site was a big struggle sesh. Lots of good names
| are taken, weren't the right vibe, etc. We sort of made the
| joke "404 Media Company Not Found" to ourselves but, I think
| to be honest we:
|
| 1) Like how it sounds
|
| 2) People get it right away, even folks I know who don't care
| a lot about tech journalism or aren't super internet savvy
| (maybe they are even more likely to find themselves on 404
| pages!)
|
| 3) This is a little pretentious and not the actual reason we
| chose it (i.e. we realized it later), but we really do want
| to tell stories from "hidden" parts of the internet / tech
| and the undercovered parts of it. 404 pages are full of
| easter eggs, and maybe it's just something about accidentally
| stumbling onto a community or wold you didn't previously know
| existed.
| kornhole wrote:
| 404 has become a sign of censorship as we are seeing more
| pages taken down from Internet Archive and other places. I
| am excited to see you continue on surveillance and perhaps
| broaden into censorship and propaganda now that you are
| freed from some of the forces behind it.
| xkcd-sucks wrote:
| Is there a Russian Internet Archive that doesn't comply
| with American takedown notices by any chance?
| kornhole wrote:
| I am not sure about Russian hosted, but an alternative to
| archive.org is archive.is. Centralized services
| eventually get compelled or corrupted. I setup
| https://archivebox.io/ on my server. Some other options
| have been reported here.
| mewse-hn wrote:
| I guess it is also in the tradition of 2600 magazine to use
| a numeric code as your nameplate
| SSLy wrote:
| There's something with your lazy img loader. Even if I
| disable uBo and FF's built-in protection, they don't come
| up.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Do you really think you will get more than half-as-many people
| to pay $10/mo as would pay $5/mo?
|
| That surprises me, but I suspect you are more likely to know
| the answer to that than I am, so it also makes me a bit sad.
| joshe wrote:
| Any chance you could not be vicious tech haters? There's a hole
| for Michael Arrington era TechCrunch reporting which just
| focused on factual information about companies and people. What
| the innovation is, how far the company has gotten with it, what
| people are trying to accomplish. If a company is boring instead
| of making a hit piece out of it just don't write about it.
| dendrite9 wrote:
| Did you look at other groups which have done something similar?
| Im curious to see how this type of project works even if not
| all of them are for me. So many people bemoan the structure of
| news and media businesses but I wonder if there needs to be
| more of a cycle of business destruction and creation to keep
| things from getting ossified and having the wrong priorities.
| Seeing this reminded me of https://escapecollective.com/ which
| came from the implosion of Cycling tips after being purchased
| by Outside.
| opheron wrote:
| Hey Jason, cool to see you pop up here! Congrats on the launch,
| I'm happy to be able to join up as a new paid subscriber.
| Really glad y'all included RSS feeds for the articles and
| premium podcast feed; there are dozens of us who still use RSS
| - dozens! :P
|
| I have a small suggestion: Would you consider adding a perk for
| premium subscribers to be able to suggest (not demand) story
| pitches/ideas, and _maybe_ vote for them to indicate which
| ideas have more interest? It 's kind of an extension of what
| you're planning to do with the FOIA requests forum, and similar
| to how some FOSS projects try to prioritize features that are
| requested or bountied by supporting donors. Also, it could be a
| nice way to crowdsource ideas from your pre-vetted audience, so
| you don't drown in spam and vote manipulation.
| [deleted]
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| I was wondering before clicking the link if I might see Joseph
| Cox there. For me Joseph _IS_ Motherboard, because the only
| time MB pops up in my feed it's because Joseph's content. well
| done and best of luck with the new endeavor guys!!
| nickthegreek wrote:
| Full article in the RSS feed! Rarely see that these days. Was
| this a conscious choice or a tech oversight?
| starik36 wrote:
| How are you being funded right now?
| _zoltan_ wrote:
| I thought this is going to be about motherboard manufacturers...
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