Everybody's a Critic
March 31, 2016 4:39 PM Subscribe
The company’s latest undertaking, which moved out of beta four months ago, is News Genius, which seeks to bridge the gap between journalism and commentary by showcasing the annotations made to the biggest news stories of the day...Anyone who puts information about themselves on the Web is consenting to a certain amount of scrutiny. But that consent becomes less cut and dry when content providers explicitly place limits on that scrutiny—for example, by disabling comments—and News Genius and the Web Annotator essentially override those restrictions.
Heading up the project is former Gawker editor Leah Finnegan, who is tasked with helping users “see news as an ongoing and evolving discussion between many parties” and, through her own annotations, inspire the community of Genius users to open up a dialogue with content creators across the Web. But it’s clear that there’s one thing News Genius hasn’t taken into consideration while evolving its business model: a very real potential for abuse.
Heading up the project is former Gawker editor Leah Finnegan, who is tasked with helping users “see news as an ongoing and evolving discussion between many parties” and, through her own annotations, inspire the community of Genius users to open up a dialogue with content creators across the Web. But it’s clear that there’s one thing News Genius hasn’t taken into consideration while evolving its business model: a very real potential for abuse.
My mind immediately goes back to Third Voice, a 1999-era browser plugin that created an opt-in overlay layer of comments which caused a very large amount of upset, outcry and dissent.
As I recall, sites began css-styling third voice's injected/overlaid page elements to effectively break it on their pages.
Do we really now have a new generation of web devs that don't remember the last bubble at all?
posted by BuxtonTheRed at 4:49 PM on March 31, 2016 [25 favorites]
As I recall, sites began css-styling third voice's injected/overlaid page elements to effectively break it on their pages.
Do we really now have a new generation of web devs that don't remember the last bubble at all?
posted by BuxtonTheRed at 4:49 PM on March 31, 2016 [25 favorites]
So basically an add-on got it you feel sites lack sufficient vectors for trolling and abuse. I'll pass.
posted by Artw at 4:50 PM on March 31, 2016 [9 favorites]
posted by Artw at 4:50 PM on March 31, 2016 [9 favorites]
Do we really now have a new generation of web devs that don't remember the last bubble at all?
Yes. I'd bet most of Genius's devs were in elementary school at best back then.
posted by Special Agent Dale Cooper at 4:50 PM on March 31, 2016 [11 favorites]
Yes. I'd bet most of Genius's devs were in elementary school at best back then.
posted by Special Agent Dale Cooper at 4:50 PM on March 31, 2016 [11 favorites]
I got halfway through the article reading the comments and it was the promoters of the tool itself that proved to me that this will be one enormous car crash that they will refuse to acknowledge and deal with.
posted by lesbiassparrow at 4:51 PM on March 31, 2016 [7 favorites]
posted by lesbiassparrow at 4:51 PM on March 31, 2016 [7 favorites]
They should pay annotators in Beenz.
posted by grumpybear69 at 4:52 PM on March 31, 2016 [29 favorites]
posted by grumpybear69 at 4:52 PM on March 31, 2016 [29 favorites]
I'm giving them a shitty Peeple score.
posted by Artw at 4:54 PM on March 31, 2016 [31 favorites]
posted by Artw at 4:54 PM on March 31, 2016 [31 favorites]
Everything about this seems like a terrible idea. If bongmaster69 wants me to know what s/he thinks about the issues of the day s/he can write their own blog post or go on Twitter or whatever.
As Homer Simpson put it, "The problem in the world today is communication. Too much communication."
posted by The Card Cheat at 4:54 PM on March 31, 2016 [6 favorites]
As Homer Simpson put it, "The problem in the world today is communication. Too much communication."
posted by The Card Cheat at 4:54 PM on March 31, 2016 [6 favorites]
Previously on Metafilter, and annotated.
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 4:59 PM on March 31, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 4:59 PM on March 31, 2016 [2 favorites]
In which the first annotation completely illustrates her point:
"I do not want someone annotating my account of being gaslit by my ex-boyfriend, as the lines between annotating and questioning, questioning and invalidating, invalidating and silencing are unclear in the best of circumstances."posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 5:09 PM on March 31, 2016 [18 favorites]swinelord 3d
Just because we might have a little “snark” in our annotations and we don’t have a bonafide “report” button doesn’t mean we are completely unethical/immoral savages — This ex-boyfriend example really doesn’t hold up.
So I can add a second layer of discussion to Metafilter discussions?
That's kind of... meta.
posted by clawsoon at 5:11 PM on March 31, 2016 [3 favorites]
That's kind of... meta.
posted by clawsoon at 5:11 PM on March 31, 2016 [3 favorites]
The Genius crowd don't seem to have found this post yet; no annotations so far.
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 5:14 PM on March 31, 2016
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 5:14 PM on March 31, 2016
IIRC, Third Voice also got sued out of existence. It wasn't just breaking CSS. Media sites were insanely hostile to it and launched an all-fronts war against it. It seemed so... unbalanced, when the more obvious problem for Third Voice users was that spammers quickly made it another vector.
posted by fatbird at 5:14 PM on March 31, 2016
posted by fatbird at 5:14 PM on March 31, 2016
So how would I search for "metafilter threads with genius annotations," for instance? Is that possible?
posted by escabeche at 5:16 PM on March 31, 2016
posted by escabeche at 5:16 PM on March 31, 2016
Annotation is awesome, but it needs to be spam filtered and/or linked to my social graph to be useful in practice.
It's always been a pet peeve of my that HTML does not allow for the Markup (annotation) of Hyper Text.
posted by MikeWarot at 5:21 PM on March 31, 2016
It's always been a pet peeve of my that HTML does not allow for the Markup (annotation) of Hyper Text.
posted by MikeWarot at 5:21 PM on March 31, 2016
Is this something I'd need to enable Javascript to know about?
posted by benito.strauss at 5:24 PM on March 31, 2016 [7 favorites]
Awww, what a lovely gift for 4channers on April fool's day.
posted by adept256 at 5:28 PM on March 31, 2016 [12 favorites]
posted by adept256 at 5:28 PM on March 31, 2016 [12 favorites]
I can not imagine this app ever reaching critical mass.
posted by five fresh fish at 5:46 PM on March 31, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by five fresh fish at 5:46 PM on March 31, 2016 [1 favorite]
The Internet is a tremendous tool for sharing one's own ignorance. I, for one, welcome this opportunity to both demonstrate my own ignorance and celebrate the ignorance of others in the sidebar instead of in the comment section. I just wish there were a way I could demonstrate my ignorance a the top of every webpage so that that would be the first thing people encounter before they have read the original content of the page.
posted by Joey Michaels at 5:47 PM on March 31, 2016 [9 favorites]
posted by Joey Michaels at 5:47 PM on March 31, 2016 [9 favorites]
Reminds me of Medium.
posted by My Dad at 5:52 PM on March 31, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by My Dad at 5:52 PM on March 31, 2016 [1 favorite]
So the question is to what extent this is different than annotating somebody's writing line by line in an entirely separate venue? I mean no shit I'm just saying I don't know what the answer to that question is. I don't personally feel like it's that different - which doesn't mean the issue of moderation isn't relevant for the same reasons as always - but clearly some people do. I guess really the impact depends on whether they actually succeed in making it an important tool in people's lives.
posted by atoxyl at 5:54 PM on March 31, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by atoxyl at 5:54 PM on March 31, 2016 [2 favorites]
I give it, oh, three months before it's exploited as a malware attack vector.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:55 PM on March 31, 2016 [6 favorites]
posted by Thorzdad at 5:55 PM on March 31, 2016 [6 favorites]
Or I suppose you could say the potential negative side of the software is proportional to the potential positive value of the software and I guess I'm not persuaded of either just yet?
posted by atoxyl at 5:56 PM on March 31, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by atoxyl at 5:56 PM on March 31, 2016 [1 favorite]
I'm giving them a shitty Peeple score.
God, I'd completely forgotten about peeple, but they're back and haven't learned a thing.
posted by urbanwhaleshark at 6:03 PM on March 31, 2016 [2 favorites]
God, I'd completely forgotten about peeple, but they're back and haven't learned a thing.
posted by urbanwhaleshark at 6:03 PM on March 31, 2016 [2 favorites]
Everything about this seems like a terrible idea. If bongmaster69 wants me to know what s/he thinks about the issues of the day s/he can write their own blog post or go on Twitter or whatever.
This is a whatever. People are allowed to discuss written works, even the works of journalists, who really need to buy themselves some pixelated sunglasses and DEAL WITH IT.
posted by save alive nothing that breatheth at 6:17 PM on March 31, 2016 [2 favorites]
This is a whatever. People are allowed to discuss written works, even the works of journalists, who really need to buy themselves some pixelated sunglasses and DEAL WITH IT.
posted by save alive nothing that breatheth at 6:17 PM on March 31, 2016 [2 favorites]
So the question is to what extent this is different than annotating somebody's writing line by line in an entirely separate venue? I mean no shit I'm just saying I don't know what the answer to that question is.
You summed it up yourself - it's not an entirely separate venue, it's an overlay pasted onto the existing one, regardless of the original creator's wishes. It's basically saying "sorry, you don't get to choose if you want comments, or what policies to manage them."
posted by NoxAeternum at 6:26 PM on March 31, 2016 [6 favorites]
You summed it up yourself - it's not an entirely separate venue, it's an overlay pasted onto the existing one, regardless of the original creator's wishes. It's basically saying "sorry, you don't get to choose if you want comments, or what policies to manage them."
posted by NoxAeternum at 6:26 PM on March 31, 2016 [6 favorites]
Can someone, anyone, PLEASE explain to me what the objection is to this? There's not a social aspect to this layer, where you hang out there and gab with your friends and then someone shows up and starts harassing you. It doesn't rob authors of pageviews. Functionally it does the same thing as any discussion forum on the web. It doesn't do anything that we don' do in threads on Metafilter a million times a day. It just displays them differently.
Anyone who puts information about themselves on the Web is consenting to a certain amount of scrutiny. But that consent becomes less cut and dry when content providers explicitly place limits on that scrutiny
This is dumb as dogshit. You don't get to give consent for scrutiny of public behavior. The fact that this displays over the original article doesn't change that. And it's not like genius annotation suddenly vandalizes the original article. It continues to exist at its original URL in perpetuity.
It's basically saying "sorry, you don't get to choose if you want comments, or what policies to manage them."
Sure, on a different website, at a different URL than the original article. It would take people actively seeking out genius annotation to find this. It's not like Genius is going to suddenly become the default URL for all reading of the internet all of a sudden.
posted by to sir with millipedes at 6:31 PM on March 31, 2016 [7 favorites]
Anyone who puts information about themselves on the Web is consenting to a certain amount of scrutiny. But that consent becomes less cut and dry when content providers explicitly place limits on that scrutiny
This is dumb as dogshit. You don't get to give consent for scrutiny of public behavior. The fact that this displays over the original article doesn't change that. And it's not like genius annotation suddenly vandalizes the original article. It continues to exist at its original URL in perpetuity.
It's basically saying "sorry, you don't get to choose if you want comments, or what policies to manage them."
Sure, on a different website, at a different URL than the original article. It would take people actively seeking out genius annotation to find this. It's not like Genius is going to suddenly become the default URL for all reading of the internet all of a sudden.
posted by to sir with millipedes at 6:31 PM on March 31, 2016 [7 favorites]
Wait, if the content is hosted via the genius servers, wouldn't that rob the original creator of page views? From a trademark and copyright protection standpoint, especially if they are better at seo than some blogger on WordPress, what happens when the genius url outranks and supersedes the original?
What measures are in place to stop griefers from using annotations to dox people, and use the genius platform to easily spread the info? Example, say a woman is willing to write about games using her real name, and she works for a publisher that fiercely moderates comments. What's to stop someone from doxxing that writer in a genius branded version, and then putting that link on say, reddit.
If the answer is erm, nothing, that would never happen, then this is a company run by people who really don't get the seamy underbelly of the interwebs.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 6:41 PM on March 31, 2016 [5 favorites]
What measures are in place to stop griefers from using annotations to dox people, and use the genius platform to easily spread the info? Example, say a woman is willing to write about games using her real name, and she works for a publisher that fiercely moderates comments. What's to stop someone from doxxing that writer in a genius branded version, and then putting that link on say, reddit.
If the answer is erm, nothing, that would never happen, then this is a company run by people who really don't get the seamy underbelly of the interwebs.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 6:41 PM on March 31, 2016 [5 favorites]
Back in 2000 there was e-Quill, an IE plug in for annotating pages. I used to collaborate with people, or to send notes to friends. I missed it a lot when it was gone.
I share the concern of people wanting to avoid the Internet of Garbage that is harassment by public commentary, but I also mourn that said garbage is robbing us of such wonderful tools.
This is why we can't have nice things indeed.
posted by kandinski at 6:49 PM on March 31, 2016 [4 favorites]
I share the concern of people wanting to avoid the Internet of Garbage that is harassment by public commentary, but I also mourn that said garbage is robbing us of such wonderful tools.
This is why we can't have nice things indeed.
posted by kandinski at 6:49 PM on March 31, 2016 [4 favorites]
The Observer article covering this tempest had something interesting embedded in it:
I'm interested in seeing how this plays out for a few reasons -- the role of annotation and "community discussion" as tools for online abuse (per Rep. Katherine Clark's concerns), the debate over when and how community dialogue adds value to the info-sphere, the question of whether what we're seeing here is annotation or appropriation.
To me, one of the most chilling things about Genius's stance throughout this has been its "If you don't want it commented on, don't put it online" defense. That seems uncomfortably close to "If you don't want attention, don't dress that way" and other victim-blaming rhetoric.
posted by sobell at 6:52 PM on March 31, 2016 [22 favorites]
During a recent interview with Ralph Swick, Chief Operating Officer of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the web’s standards body, he expressed optimism that a web standard for annotation is coming, which would almost certainly mean that the feature would be built into every major browser.The ideas that people crave a) engaging with the "communities" that are commenting on their work or b) knowing that "communities" are engaging with their work seem sweetly naive to me. Ask anyone who's been the target of harassment by any online group (or even by their classmates online) if they want to know what people are saying about them and how often they're saying it.
When and if it does, users might see some sort of flag at the top of their screen showing if any given web page has been annotated. Clicking on that flag might reveal a multitude of layers of communities that have chimed in, perhaps everyone from political parties to 8Chan users.
Mr. Whaley takes it further. He described a futuristic vision called “persistent ambient search,” where a web user can always know if anyone anywhere is talking about something he or she is invested in. Like his or her own blog.
I'm interested in seeing how this plays out for a few reasons -- the role of annotation and "community discussion" as tools for online abuse (per Rep. Katherine Clark's concerns), the debate over when and how community dialogue adds value to the info-sphere, the question of whether what we're seeing here is annotation or appropriation.
To me, one of the most chilling things about Genius's stance throughout this has been its "If you don't want it commented on, don't put it online" defense. That seems uncomfortably close to "If you don't want attention, don't dress that way" and other victim-blaming rhetoric.
posted by sobell at 6:52 PM on March 31, 2016 [22 favorites]
(as we're listing defunct prior annotation efforts: Google Sidewiki, which I think never got much traction.)
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 6:57 PM on March 31, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 6:57 PM on March 31, 2016 [2 favorites]
Abuse? They've not only considered it; they're banking on it. What better way to promote your "service" than to have one-click access to the shittiest, lowest-effort comments people are making about whatever you're reading? It's portable bathroom stall graffiti.
posted by anifinder at 7:12 PM on March 31, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by anifinder at 7:12 PM on March 31, 2016 [2 favorites]
I summed up the question I just said I don't know the answer. I never would have thought of the commenting aspect as different than running comments offsite but apparently people do and I'm not going to say they're wrong. Itseems like we don't have norms established for this one way or another.
Concerns about the mirroring aspect seem more obvious to me.
Wait, if the content is hosted via the genius servers, wouldn't that rob the original creator of page views? From a trademark and copyright protection standpoint, especially if they are better at seo than some blogger on WordPress, what happens when the genius url outranks and supersedes the original?
posted by atoxyl at 7:16 PM on March 31, 2016
Concerns about the mirroring aspect seem more obvious to me.
Wait, if the content is hosted via the genius servers, wouldn't that rob the original creator of page views? From a trademark and copyright protection standpoint, especially if they are better at seo than some blogger on WordPress, what happens when the genius url outranks and supersedes the original?
posted by atoxyl at 7:16 PM on March 31, 2016
I have to say that the Genius annotations for Hamilton (pretty much the only time I've used Genius) have been uniformly excellent and have added a lot to my understanding of the album and the show. Most of those annotations were written by a handful of people, are very well-researched, and bring out a lot of details in a very complex work.
I do feel like there's a bit of a weird emotional difference between responding to someone's work in a new blog post/tweet/comment/whatever and making an annotation, as annotations involve you literally scribbling in words next to someone else's writing. I'm not sure why that feels different to me, but it does. It's also super low-friction, which encourages drive-by snark at best.
Adding a "report abuse" button is literally the least you can do in this day and age, and it's disturbing it took them this long to get around to it. I do think allowing website owners to turn the thing off on their sites would be a reasonable first step too.
posted by zachlipton at 7:32 PM on March 31, 2016 [3 favorites]
I do feel like there's a bit of a weird emotional difference between responding to someone's work in a new blog post/tweet/comment/whatever and making an annotation, as annotations involve you literally scribbling in words next to someone else's writing. I'm not sure why that feels different to me, but it does. It's also super low-friction, which encourages drive-by snark at best.
Adding a "report abuse" button is literally the least you can do in this day and age, and it's disturbing it took them this long to get around to it. I do think allowing website owners to turn the thing off on their sites would be a reasonable first step too.
posted by zachlipton at 7:32 PM on March 31, 2016 [3 favorites]
There's one way I would not have (much) of a problem with this: If Genius had a clearly defined (and obviously always obeyed) line of code you could place in the root of your domain, or on certain pages, which mimicked robots.txt "allow" and "deny" commands. (And furthermore, you should be able to change that at any time, and if you do opt out, the annotations on their server go away.)
Can I sue Genius for libelous comments left in annotations? Can I sue Genius if an annotations page is used as a gathering point for a doxxing or swatting? Do they have actual humans in place to oversee disputes, or is it five bros in a basement and a "robust filter"?
I guarantee you one of their marketing "geniuses" has already floated the idea that any, say, Amazon affiliate links are changed to their amazon links, the site's ads are swapped for their ads, or even additional advertising is inserted.
The link at page top, which says "annotated" shows a complete copy of a MF page on their server. That can't be what they're actually doing, can it?
How is that going to hold up to a DCMA take-down?
What are they going to do about illegal content, say someone wants to annotate a warez page, and now they have a copy?
What happens when I accidentally put a 10MB image into a page, realize my mistake, replace it, but their copy is still linking to my original image and kills my site?
What about my own comment form (assuming I have one)? Hopefully it's properly protected from cross-site scripting, submitted with ajax...I sure as shit am not accepting a comment from their server. So now they have limited the functionality of my page.
As a purely browser-based overlay which never touches my original content, ok, I can see that at least being legally defensible. But copying my stuff down to their own server? So many potential issues.
posted by maxwelton at 7:34 PM on March 31, 2016 [5 favorites]
Can I sue Genius for libelous comments left in annotations? Can I sue Genius if an annotations page is used as a gathering point for a doxxing or swatting? Do they have actual humans in place to oversee disputes, or is it five bros in a basement and a "robust filter"?
I guarantee you one of their marketing "geniuses" has already floated the idea that any, say, Amazon affiliate links are changed to their amazon links, the site's ads are swapped for their ads, or even additional advertising is inserted.
The link at page top, which says "annotated" shows a complete copy of a MF page on their server. That can't be what they're actually doing, can it?
How is that going to hold up to a DCMA take-down?
What are they going to do about illegal content, say someone wants to annotate a warez page, and now they have a copy?
What happens when I accidentally put a 10MB image into a page, realize my mistake, replace it, but their copy is still linking to my original image and kills my site?
What about my own comment form (assuming I have one)? Hopefully it's properly protected from cross-site scripting, submitted with ajax...I sure as shit am not accepting a comment from their server. So now they have limited the functionality of my page.
As a purely browser-based overlay which never touches my original content, ok, I can see that at least being legally defensible. But copying my stuff down to their own server? So many potential issues.
posted by maxwelton at 7:34 PM on March 31, 2016 [5 favorites]
Thanks, sobell, for linking to Glenn Fleishman's great piece. He does a much better job than the Slate author of explaining the issues with Genius News.
There's also a huge difference between what I'd separate into citation and appropriation: Citation is the reference to something else, whether it's lyrics, a blog post, someone's public tweet, or a published article online or only in print. Because the commentary in citation links to the original or, at most, reproduces a small part of it, there's a clarity of it having a freestanding purpose and nature.
Appropriation reforms someone else's work into a product on which you build. It typically involves either outright violation of copyright or invocation of the fair-use doctrine. Reproduction of the whole in much the same form as the original (or a translation, such as audio into words that are identical) forms the basis.
...The Genius Web Annotator is a hybrid of citation and appropriation that doesn't respect the source's owner nor have any mechanism to opt out or block it. The site retrieves the original page through a proxy server and then rewrites it with added JavaScript, which lets it overlay its commentary tool. I wrote the company earlier in the week through its general feedback form asking about how to opt my sites out. I've received no response so far.
This is my beef with Genius News. It feels like a violation (or would, if I still blogged) because it "reforms someone else's work into a product on which you build."
posted by Bella Donna at 7:49 PM on March 31, 2016 [6 favorites]
There's also a huge difference between what I'd separate into citation and appropriation: Citation is the reference to something else, whether it's lyrics, a blog post, someone's public tweet, or a published article online or only in print. Because the commentary in citation links to the original or, at most, reproduces a small part of it, there's a clarity of it having a freestanding purpose and nature.
Appropriation reforms someone else's work into a product on which you build. It typically involves either outright violation of copyright or invocation of the fair-use doctrine. Reproduction of the whole in much the same form as the original (or a translation, such as audio into words that are identical) forms the basis.
...The Genius Web Annotator is a hybrid of citation and appropriation that doesn't respect the source's owner nor have any mechanism to opt out or block it. The site retrieves the original page through a proxy server and then rewrites it with added JavaScript, which lets it overlay its commentary tool. I wrote the company earlier in the week through its general feedback form asking about how to opt my sites out. I've received no response so far.
This is my beef with Genius News. It feels like a violation (or would, if I still blogged) because it "reforms someone else's work into a product on which you build."
posted by Bella Donna at 7:49 PM on March 31, 2016 [6 favorites]
It would be really funny if people mostly just used this to annotate genius.com itself (there are already annotations on the login page and the Forums page).
posted by oulipian at 7:51 PM on March 31, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by oulipian at 7:51 PM on March 31, 2016 [1 favorite]
It would be really funny if people mostly just used this to annotate genius.com itself (there are already annotations on the login page and the Forums page).
That would be funny.
How about taking a step further: Can you annotate Genius annotations? What happens if you put the Genius URL in front of a Genius URL?
It would be a pity if they somehow stopped you from doing that. Hypocritical, too, if the only web content protected from annotation is their own.
I hope that someone has at least attempted to do this with "Recursion: See recursion".
posted by clawsoon at 7:59 PM on March 31, 2016 [3 favorites]
That would be funny.
How about taking a step further: Can you annotate Genius annotations? What happens if you put the Genius URL in front of a Genius URL?
It would be a pity if they somehow stopped you from doing that. Hypocritical, too, if the only web content protected from annotation is their own.
I hope that someone has at least attempted to do this with "Recursion: See recursion".
posted by clawsoon at 7:59 PM on March 31, 2016 [3 favorites]
As a purely browser-based overlay which never touches my original content, ok, I can see that at least being legally defensible. But copying my stuff down to their own server? So many potential issues.
Yeah, it looks like they are actually mirroring at least some of the page content and (according to the Glenn Fleishman piece cited above) modifying it to incorporate their annotation javascript then serving it to users. Their scraping tool also seems to be ignoring robots.txt, which is not very nice.
I guess they'd have to be relying on a fair use defence, which seems dodgy to me as this is quite different from other cases where caching has been found to be fair use. I wonder if anyone's sent them a DMCA takedown request yet (and what they'd do if they got one).
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 8:04 PM on March 31, 2016
Yeah, it looks like they are actually mirroring at least some of the page content and (according to the Glenn Fleishman piece cited above) modifying it to incorporate their annotation javascript then serving it to users. Their scraping tool also seems to be ignoring robots.txt, which is not very nice.
I guess they'd have to be relying on a fair use defence, which seems dodgy to me as this is quite different from other cases where caching has been found to be fair use. I wonder if anyone's sent them a DMCA takedown request yet (and what they'd do if they got one).
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 8:04 PM on March 31, 2016
Are they still trying to make "tates" happen? (It's not going to happen.)
posted by RogerB at 8:13 PM on March 31, 2016
posted by RogerB at 8:13 PM on March 31, 2016
Mirroring a site without permission clearly crosses the line, but as far as "If you don't want it commented on, don't put it online" goes; linking to something on the Internet and then commenting on them is a large part of what we do here on Metafilter, and on other sites. (Excluding certain individuals who have a bad habit of comment without reading the article.)
Still, 1999 was 17 years ago, and since then, Facebook's shown that a low paid army of censors can moderate content, though I doubt Genius' ability to be that clever (something to do with their name) and develop a program that reads every comment, determine if it has abusive content, and automatically remove those that do. But even if they had such a system, the mirroring will get them shutdown as soon as it receives enough attention.
posted by fragmede at 4:22 AM on April 1, 2016 [2 favorites]
Still, 1999 was 17 years ago, and since then, Facebook's shown that a low paid army of censors can moderate content, though I doubt Genius' ability to be that clever (something to do with their name) and develop a program that reads every comment, determine if it has abusive content, and automatically remove those that do. But even if they had such a system, the mirroring will get them shutdown as soon as it receives enough attention.
posted by fragmede at 4:22 AM on April 1, 2016 [2 favorites]
"Now every website is its own subreddit! What could possibly go wrong!"
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 4:53 AM on April 1, 2016 [8 favorites]
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 4:53 AM on April 1, 2016 [8 favorites]
I can live with Web Annotations in general. So long as they are clearly annotations and not part of the original page, I don't really mind if some random collection of people are commenting on my work without my knowledge. It doesn't affect users of my site in any way and people can do that right now, albeit without the nice interface.
Getting technical for a minute, I originally thought that this would be implemented by genius.it loading the original site in an iframe and then somehow splatting their content from their web app over the top. That is not what happens. They appear to request the page themselves and insert their stuff into the DOM as it is proxied back to your browser.
This is a spectaculally bad idea.
That means that all these sites effectively come from the same genius.it domain and Javascript in any site can access resources it any other site - hello massive worldwide XSS attacks. A malicious site could do some "interesting" things to genius' interface, they do not appear to filter out any scripts from the original site although they do seem to block logon forms (presumably because the cookies wouldn't work anyway).
I advise against using it, even though I don't mind the functionality.
posted by AndrewStephens at 6:00 AM on April 1, 2016 [7 favorites]
Getting technical for a minute, I originally thought that this would be implemented by genius.it loading the original site in an iframe and then somehow splatting their content from their web app over the top. That is not what happens. They appear to request the page themselves and insert their stuff into the DOM as it is proxied back to your browser.
This is a spectaculally bad idea.
That means that all these sites effectively come from the same genius.it domain and Javascript in any site can access resources it any other site - hello massive worldwide XSS attacks. A malicious site could do some "interesting" things to genius' interface, they do not appear to filter out any scripts from the original site although they do seem to block logon forms (presumably because the cookies wouldn't work anyway).
I advise against using it, even though I don't mind the functionality.
posted by AndrewStephens at 6:00 AM on April 1, 2016 [7 favorites]
Slate, fire your caption writer:
Female bloggers have a long, sordid history of harassment on the Web.
Which makes it sound like they're the ones doing the harassing you dumbass caption writer ARGH. Plus it's just crappy and the image is meh and can you at least try a little, people??
Oh wait, it's just a shortened version of a part of the article further down:
Female bloggers have a long, sordid history of harassment on the Web—Gamergate is just the tip of the iceberg—and while Genius-enabled annotations could theoretically bring a larger audience to unknown writers, some denizens of the Internet are not seeking to broaden their page views; they actively wish to stay in their own circles, avoiding potential readers who are likely to be unfriendly.
So fire your editor maybe. This is a terrible sentence. You should all be ashamed.
As to the software, yes definitely it will be used for abuse, but also for massive amounts of spam. Third-party platforms handle commentary perfectly well. If you can't be arsed to copy/paste a link to your Twitter to discuss a piece, or search a hashtag, or post it on Reddit or Metafilter, then maybe your comment really isn't that pressing.
posted by emjaybee at 8:20 AM on April 1, 2016 [4 favorites]
Female bloggers have a long, sordid history of harassment on the Web.
Which makes it sound like they're the ones doing the harassing you dumbass caption writer ARGH. Plus it's just crappy and the image is meh and can you at least try a little, people??
Oh wait, it's just a shortened version of a part of the article further down:
Female bloggers have a long, sordid history of harassment on the Web—Gamergate is just the tip of the iceberg—and while Genius-enabled annotations could theoretically bring a larger audience to unknown writers, some denizens of the Internet are not seeking to broaden their page views; they actively wish to stay in their own circles, avoiding potential readers who are likely to be unfriendly.
So fire your editor maybe. This is a terrible sentence. You should all be ashamed.
As to the software, yes definitely it will be used for abuse, but also for massive amounts of spam. Third-party platforms handle commentary perfectly well. If you can't be arsed to copy/paste a link to your Twitter to discuss a piece, or search a hashtag, or post it on Reddit or Metafilter, then maybe your comment really isn't that pressing.
posted by emjaybee at 8:20 AM on April 1, 2016 [4 favorites]
I wrote the Observer story on this topic which came out a half hour after the Slate article, which sobell shared above.
If everyone hasn't seen it, very shortly thereafter Genius finally rolled out its "Report abuse" link on all annotations.
And Hypothesis (another, older, similar service) has announced a process to reevaluate all its policies and the product to better counter abuse, while still serving the fundamental mission.
Also, Vijith Assar created a piece of software that effectively befuddles the web annotator, for anyone who doesn't want annotations on their content.
posted by BradyDale at 8:43 AM on April 1, 2016 [10 favorites]
If everyone hasn't seen it, very shortly thereafter Genius finally rolled out its "Report abuse" link on all annotations.
And Hypothesis (another, older, similar service) has announced a process to reevaluate all its policies and the product to better counter abuse, while still serving the fundamental mission.
Also, Vijith Assar created a piece of software that effectively befuddles the web annotator, for anyone who doesn't want annotations on their content.
posted by BradyDale at 8:43 AM on April 1, 2016 [10 favorites]
Do we really now have a new generation of web devs that don't remember the last bubble at all?
-BuxtonTheRed
I think about this all the time. I constantly see stories that seem to operate under the assumption that no one was using the Internet until about 2005. There's this huge ignorance about the pre-MySpace era that I'm constantly frustrated by.
posted by BradyDale at 8:46 AM on April 1, 2016 [7 favorites]
-BuxtonTheRed
I think about this all the time. I constantly see stories that seem to operate under the assumption that no one was using the Internet until about 2005. There's this huge ignorance about the pre-MySpace era that I'm constantly frustrated by.
posted by BradyDale at 8:46 AM on April 1, 2016 [7 favorites]
so is some text supposed to appear when you mouse over the highlights?
edit: oh, no, click on them and eventually something slides in from the right.
posted by andrewcooke at 8:59 AM on April 1, 2016
edit: oh, no, click on them and eventually something slides in from the right.
posted by andrewcooke at 8:59 AM on April 1, 2016
very shortly thereafter Genius finally rolled out its "Report abuse" link on all annotations.
Ok, they have a link. What's their abuse policy? How many paid moderators do they have? Are they aiming for a Twitter-style "We'll let harassment fly" type approach, or a Facebook-style "We'll ban nipples, but hate-speech is cool" approach?
Without teeth, "report abuse" buttons are just a fig leaf.
posted by CrystalDave at 11:10 AM on April 1, 2016 [4 favorites]
Ok, they have a link. What's their abuse policy? How many paid moderators do they have? Are they aiming for a Twitter-style "We'll let harassment fly" type approach, or a Facebook-style "We'll ban nipples, but hate-speech is cool" approach?
Without teeth, "report abuse" buttons are just a fig leaf.
posted by CrystalDave at 11:10 AM on April 1, 2016 [4 favorites]
Ah, Web annotation (or Web augmentation, a term I believe I coined back when I wrote my PhD (15 years ago)). I did a lot of work back in the day trying to enable proper hypermedia functionality (including, but certainly not limited to, links and annotations external to the page) on the Web. It’s still interesting, a few papers get published on the topic from time to time, but despite a few standards orientered attempts (such as W3C’s very own XLink) it has never really gotten off the ground. As Nelson put it, we are stuck with what is essentially ftp with lipstick.
What the commercial versions usually got wrong (and it seems to be case here as well) is that annotations, links, and other structures are personal, or only shared among co-workers, teachers/students, or the especially interested. (Besides, proxying other peoples’ content is just rude and neither scalable nor robust).
posted by bouvin at 1:25 PM on April 1, 2016 [4 favorites]
What the commercial versions usually got wrong (and it seems to be case here as well) is that annotations, links, and other structures are personal, or only shared among co-workers, teachers/students, or the especially interested. (Besides, proxying other peoples’ content is just rude and neither scalable nor robust).
posted by bouvin at 1:25 PM on April 1, 2016 [4 favorites]
And now, of course, we have the backlash to the backlash which, amusingly to this Baby Boomer, is being blamed on Millennials feeling entitled. Because naturally it's the fault of 83.1 million people. If anybody's feeling entitled here, I'm thinking maybe it's the author of The News Genius Non-Controversy and Millennial Entitlement At Work who, IMHO, felt entitled to write up a piece after investigating for roughly 30 seconds. The writer uses News Genius as a hook into a story that says, essentially, OMG Millennials--So Whiny and Also Wrong!
"Claim that Dawson’s blog isn’t a professional space all you want — she works in social media and has a press section on her web site" (nice to know that the writer gets to decide for others what is professional and what is not) and adds later, "it is outlandish for professionals to expect to have their feelings prioritized in their workplaces." True enough but who says they do? There's exactly two other examples apart from Dawson, and I think she's mislabeling the Dawson example for a bogus trend piece.
I call BS but then, my life has always been easy, and I've screwed up the country for everyone else, so how could I possibly understand?
posted by Bella Donna at 2:49 PM on April 1, 2016
"Claim that Dawson’s blog isn’t a professional space all you want — she works in social media and has a press section on her web site" (nice to know that the writer gets to decide for others what is professional and what is not) and adds later, "it is outlandish for professionals to expect to have their feelings prioritized in their workplaces." True enough but who says they do? There's exactly two other examples apart from Dawson, and I think she's mislabeling the Dawson example for a bogus trend piece.
I call BS but then, my life has always been easy, and I've screwed up the country for everyone else, so how could I possibly understand?
posted by Bella Donna at 2:49 PM on April 1, 2016
How does this differ materially from (e.g.) me writing a blog post (or Tumblr post or Facebook post or tweet), commenting on another web page, and including a link to the original page?
Does it make a fundamental difference that these sites are intending to wrap the other sites, and aggregate comments from many different commenters? Maybe the reduced friction creates a different form of commentary?
posted by theorique at 6:23 PM on April 1, 2016
Does it make a fundamental difference that these sites are intending to wrap the other sites, and aggregate comments from many different commenters? Maybe the reduced friction creates a different form of commentary?
posted by theorique at 6:23 PM on April 1, 2016
When a philistine does this to a physical book, it renders the text essentially unreadable for anyone else. I clicked over to Miss Dawson’s blog and found a bunch of yellow highlighted marks that linked to antagonistic responses typically 5x the length of what was commented upon. How is this anything but bullying and an attempt to silence? Comments at the bottom, or no comments at all, respect a writer's right to finish their thoughts in peace.
posted by Scram at 7:25 AM on April 2, 2016
posted by Scram at 7:25 AM on April 2, 2016
if only there were some way to instantly remove all those yellow highlights, just like you can't do with a book....
posted by andrewcooke at 7:44 PM on April 2, 2016
posted by andrewcooke at 7:44 PM on April 2, 2016
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posted by zachlipton at 4:46 PM on March 31, 2016 [2 favorites]