Microsoft launches a personalized news service, Microsoft Start(techcrunch.com)
techcrunch.com
Microsoft launches a personalized news service, Microsoft Start
https://techcrunch.com/2021/09/07/microsoft-launches-a-personalized-news-service-microsoft-start/
52 comments
This is the issue. If you are already down a rabbit hole of beliefs you are going to keep seeing articles from news services biased towards your way of thinking. Things that continue to constantly confirm how you feel about the world.
In an ideal world news organizations would just provide both sides of a side, but unfortunately in todays world news agencies seem incredibly polarized and twist stories to suite their agendas. This now makes personalized news feeds even more scary and further contributes to the kind of polarization we see happening now. People seem more divided then ever in the last 20-30 years.
In an ideal world news organizations would just provide both sides of a side, but unfortunately in todays world news agencies seem incredibly polarized and twist stories to suite their agendas. This now makes personalized news feeds even more scary and further contributes to the kind of polarization we see happening now. People seem more divided then ever in the last 20-30 years.
I am not sure what time frame you're thinking of, but in my home country for most of the last centuries there were plenty of newspapers, often expounding news with a strong political bias, i.e. partys had their own newspaper.
Personalized news feed are making this worse, but it's not a new thing.
Personalized news feed are making this worse, but it's not a new thing.
Strongly agree. Local newspapers contain “common myths” that underpin society: a local shared understanding of the world, where the technical veracity of that understanding is secondary to its promulgation. That is being lost by hyperpersonalisation at the cost of community bonding. If you think that’s a good thing, consider whether you trust (or even know) your neighbours.
The tragedy of the commons is that nobody cares about the maintenance of the common good: I posit that the common good ought to include shared myths. Historically, this meant shared worldview and religion. Today, we are challenged to find other bases for trust in one another.
The tragedy of the commons is that nobody cares about the maintenance of the common good: I posit that the common good ought to include shared myths. Historically, this meant shared worldview and religion. Today, we are challenged to find other bases for trust in one another.
> Personalized news feeds destroy that commonality.
The web and partisan cable news channels have long since done away with that commonality. It's dead, buried, and cold in the ground. That's why it feels like one side of the political spectrum is living in the world of Fox News, Newsmax, OANN, and so on, while the other side is living in the world of CNN, MSNBC, Huffington, Vox, and so on.
There are some very good attempts [0] to make media bias more visible, but people who have already decided that Fox and Newsmax are centrist and OANN is right-leaning are not going to evaluate things fairly anymore.
[0]: https://www.allsides.com/media-bias/media-bias-chart
The web and partisan cable news channels have long since done away with that commonality. It's dead, buried, and cold in the ground. That's why it feels like one side of the political spectrum is living in the world of Fox News, Newsmax, OANN, and so on, while the other side is living in the world of CNN, MSNBC, Huffington, Vox, and so on.
There are some very good attempts [0] to make media bias more visible, but people who have already decided that Fox and Newsmax are centrist and OANN is right-leaning are not going to evaluate things fairly anymore.
[0]: https://www.allsides.com/media-bias/media-bias-chart
I find that site too simplistic, since it does not try to gauge accuracy, only bias.
The Adfontes Media Bias chart uses a two-axis system, plotting accuracy against bias, and inevitably ending up with most sources on an inverted-V shape: https://adfontesmedia.com
The Adfontes Media Bias chart uses a two-axis system, plotting accuracy against bias, and inevitably ending up with most sources on an inverted-V shape: https://adfontesmedia.com
The Adfontes chart is clever, but I always thought it must be distorted in and of itself -- they seem afraid to label any right-leaning source as "fact reporting", and any left-leaning source as "contains misleading info". The split is very visible in their article rankings[0]. What I trust most is Pew Research's (they are fairly centrist [1]) examination of the partisanship of a news outlet's audience, see: https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/2020/01/24/democrats-... (note that there are several pages. I've linked to page 2.)
Unfortunately, Pew's list is not consistently updated like the Adfontes chart and other media-bias checking sites.
[0]: https://adfontesmedia.com/interactive-media-bias-chart/
[1]: https://www.allsides.com/news-source/pew-research
Unfortunately, Pew's list is not consistently updated like the Adfontes chart and other media-bias checking sites.
[0]: https://adfontesmedia.com/interactive-media-bias-chart/
[1]: https://www.allsides.com/news-source/pew-research
I recently discovered https://ground.news/ which has a nice display of left/right coverage for each news article.
I have friends across the political spectrum, but these days there is no shared commonality at all. Not just no commonality about what's good and bad, but no commonality about what is reality and what isn't. I can't even chit-chat small-talk with my conservative friends about current events anymore, because their idea of what is happening around the world is totally different than mine. I'll bring up some recent event that was reported on widely in the mainstream media, and he'll have no idea what I'm talking about because his sources of news never even mentioned it. And to his point of view, talking to me just shows I have a different set of gaping "reality blind spots".
If you ever had a friend growing up whose family was devoutly religious, you might have seen something similar: They run in totally different circles, all their friends are from their church, they take their kids to totally different movies, listen to totally different music. Can't talk sports with them because they literally can't name a football team. No culture overlap at all. Totally siloed off in their own world. That's what's happening with all this personalization and alternative news sources now, but instead of a small group of very religious people, it's 30-40% of the country!
If you ever had a friend growing up whose family was devoutly religious, you might have seen something similar: They run in totally different circles, all their friends are from their church, they take their kids to totally different movies, listen to totally different music. Can't talk sports with them because they literally can't name a football team. No culture overlap at all. Totally siloed off in their own world. That's what's happening with all this personalization and alternative news sources now, but instead of a small group of very religious people, it's 30-40% of the country!
Is anyone else exhausted by the constant barrage of "personalized" experiences? Its always been about click rate for advertisers, but now they push their monetization model as a feature and it just feels draining.
Seeing the name of this, I recalled Microsoft's Start Menu, Microsoft's Start Screen, Start.com, Internet Start (start page in MSIE), Microsoft's Start Something tagline, and so forth.
I'm surprised that MS didn't say Making it Easier, Faster, Better, More Open, and those things.
I'm surprised that MS didn't say Making it Easier, Faster, Better, More Open, and those things.
The layout is simple and clean... so beautiful!
Microsoft: making it harder, better, faster, stronger.
The less tech literate to prefer it. There are fewer things to learn and click on to see what they want. I am not a big fan, personally, but know plenty who are. My guess is that MS would much rather provide something that many like, others are indifferent or slightly dislike, and few extremely dislike.
The result of automated personalization is yet another internet echo chamber.
Computers are pretty good at telling you what you want to know, because they work off of your existing feedback. What they're terrible at is telling you what you should know, and what is important.
If the same systems that recommend the news were used to deliver the weather, every forecast would be "Sunny and 72 degrees." In other words, useless.
Computers are pretty good at telling you what you want to know, because they work off of your existing feedback. What they're terrible at is telling you what you should know, and what is important.
If the same systems that recommend the news were used to deliver the weather, every forecast would be "Sunny and 72 degrees." In other words, useless.
More likely every forecast would be either extreme heatwave or bitter cold snap headed your way. Similarly useless but a higher probability that you to click to find out more..
Beyond exhausted. It's infuriating how these "experiences" are shoved down our throats. Often integrated deeply integrated into systems they should not be (and that we pay for) and turned on by default.
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No. I prefer it. Having a personalized feed is much preferable for me to the old way of having little freedom over content and just consuming whatever limited crap is on offer.
Maybe not this specific instance but in general having 5 newspapers to choose from and 15 channels was awful compared to now.
Maybe not this specific instance but in general having 5 newspapers to choose from and 15 channels was awful compared to now.
> As a standalone website (available on Microsoft Edge and Chrome) – MicrosoftStart.com
No way...this is absolutely insane. If you are on a Mac, go to MicrosoftStart.com on Safari. (Safari on iOS is an equally laughable result)
They gave MSN a fresh coat of paint and broke it for half their potential audience. Truly an astounding feat of engineering. I'm crying thinking of the engineers and PMs who probably got promoted after this announcement.
No way...this is absolutely insane. If you are on a Mac, go to MicrosoftStart.com on Safari. (Safari on iOS is an equally laughable result)
They gave MSN a fresh coat of paint and broke it for half their potential audience. Truly an astounding feat of engineering. I'm crying thinking of the engineers and PMs who probably got promoted after this announcement.
You mean the same people that changed the start page on the ios "news" app. Instead of showing the latest news when you launch the app, it displays a link to "Groceries" allowing you to do something related to "Groceries", and then after a ~10 second delay, it will eventually start to display some news stories [1]
It is a act of genius to change a "news" app to have "groceries" button displayed left, right and center instead of showing some "news".
I think they should add an "laundry" button. Maybe even a "garbage sorting" button so we have to a place to put this Groceries app, sorry news app.
PS: I have been using this news app on a daily basic since it was called "MSN News Beta" some many years (> 10?) ago. When I first saw the redesign with the Grocery link, my first thought was "they got a new product manager that wants to fix something that wasn't broken". Because of the grocery link I have now stopped using it, at that "feature" really really annoys me.
Just display some freaking news for crying out loud and leave the grocery shopping to another apps.
[1] What the IOS news app look like the first 10 seconds after launch. It has always displayed news at start up. Now you can do your groceries instead. https://imgur.com/a/XYvYq88
It is a act of genius to change a "news" app to have "groceries" button displayed left, right and center instead of showing some "news".
I think they should add an "laundry" button. Maybe even a "garbage sorting" button so we have to a place to put this Groceries app, sorry news app.
PS: I have been using this news app on a daily basic since it was called "MSN News Beta" some many years (> 10?) ago. When I first saw the redesign with the Grocery link, my first thought was "they got a new product manager that wants to fix something that wasn't broken". Because of the grocery link I have now stopped using it, at that "feature" really really annoys me.
Just display some freaking news for crying out loud and leave the grocery shopping to another apps.
[1] What the IOS news app look like the first 10 seconds after launch. It has always displayed news at start up. Now you can do your groceries instead. https://imgur.com/a/XYvYq88
The app just got updated and the groceries link has been removed and the news has returned. Thank you :)
> in addition to being integrated with other Microsoft products, including Windows 10 and 11 and its Microsoft Edge web browser
Happily I - and the rest of the immediate family - only use Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC (previously LTSB) and don't have Edge!
I'm confident we will all enjoy missing out on this latest _enhancement_ :)
Happily I - and the rest of the immediate family - only use Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC (previously LTSB) and don't have Edge!
I'm confident we will all enjoy missing out on this latest _enhancement_ :)
Edge is my browser of choice. Chromium base, great features (collections, vertical tabs), performant, and allows me to automatically clear all history and caches every time I close the browser.
Edge is probably a fine browser.
But I'm phasing out Microsoft on my computers - even overlooking all the crappy ads and shady telemetry, they fundamentally don't build usable account systems.
"Microsoft accounts" are really bad. And I'm not even talking about the 'personal' or 'work/school' split, which is also horrible. I'm talking about having multiple different accounts with different names. I've worked hard to only have one private one. But since I have three different ones through work, I've discovered a few fun things.
When all accounts have the same initials (from my name), it's usually impossible to see which one you're logged in as.
Teams generally crashes when you try to change accounts, and notifications don't work properly across accounts.
Signing in to a WinUI "modern" app is really scary, as it might "take over" your whole computer and render other apps semi-unusable if you're not using those with the Microsoft account you just signed in with
Sign-in browser views generally don't show up in the window list, and generally don't explain why you're asked to sign in, or what app you're signing in to. The window list thing is a UI annoyance, the lack of information is a security issue. And also makes me sign in with the wrong account when I guess wrong. Oh, this wasn't Teams, it was Git. Oops, other account.
Also, Microsoft wants me to always be signed in to their system when I'm just using my computer at home, offline. It's mentally taxing. I don't want to keep track of 43 different privacy settings to make sure I don't have a "Created 10 PowerPoint slide transitions" badge visible on my "profile" or whatever. But I understand that last issue might be less important for other people.
But I'm phasing out Microsoft on my computers - even overlooking all the crappy ads and shady telemetry, they fundamentally don't build usable account systems.
"Microsoft accounts" are really bad. And I'm not even talking about the 'personal' or 'work/school' split, which is also horrible. I'm talking about having multiple different accounts with different names. I've worked hard to only have one private one. But since I have three different ones through work, I've discovered a few fun things.
When all accounts have the same initials (from my name), it's usually impossible to see which one you're logged in as.
Teams generally crashes when you try to change accounts, and notifications don't work properly across accounts.
Signing in to a WinUI "modern" app is really scary, as it might "take over" your whole computer and render other apps semi-unusable if you're not using those with the Microsoft account you just signed in with
Sign-in browser views generally don't show up in the window list, and generally don't explain why you're asked to sign in, or what app you're signing in to. The window list thing is a UI annoyance, the lack of information is a security issue. And also makes me sign in with the wrong account when I guess wrong. Oh, this wasn't Teams, it was Git. Oops, other account.
Also, Microsoft wants me to always be signed in to their system when I'm just using my computer at home, offline. It's mentally taxing. I don't want to keep track of 43 different privacy settings to make sure I don't have a "Created 10 PowerPoint slide transitions" badge visible on my "profile" or whatever. But I understand that last issue might be less important for other people.
I have a Win 7 VM that has a set of CAD/CAM tools than runs my little machine shop. It is more valuable to me than most other data I keep, because I'm pretty sure I can't recreate anything like it. I have a clean copy from shortly after it was created that I re-clone every so often, and it is allowed no network access.
I will be running this VM until I don't care about these machines anymore.
Aside from that and Excel at work, MS still has no other role in my life.
I will be running this VM until I don't care about these machines anymore.
Aside from that and Excel at work, MS still has no other role in my life.
I have an extreme dislike for "personalized" anything. I want to read things that I disagree with or are disgusted by sometimes. I don't want to be in an algorithmic echo chamber.
It also usually means ads.
It also usually means ads.
Not something a large company like Microsoft would try but I would much rather have a curated list of quality articles that give me multiple, intelligent view points on a topic.
Articles that have had a lot of time & effort put into them.
Articles where the author didn't spend 90% of the time on the headline & lede.
Articles whose goal is to educate not just get views.
What I don't want is some random list of click bait articles meant to sell ads. This seems to be what most of these services end up as.
Articles that have had a lot of time & effort put into them.
Articles where the author didn't spend 90% of the time on the headline & lede.
Articles whose goal is to educate not just get views.
What I don't want is some random list of click bait articles meant to sell ads. This seems to be what most of these services end up as.
This doesn't work in Safari? What year is it?
I tested in Safari. It shows a full-page error that says: "Download a supported browser to get started." with a link to download Microsoft Edge. Perhaps Microsoft is using this as an opportunity to promote Edge for macOS.
I haven't tested whether the site works in Safari if you spoof a non-Safari User-Agent string.
I haven't tested whether the site works in Safari if you spoof a non-Safari User-Agent string.
> I haven't tested whether the site works in Safari if you spoof a non-Safari User-Agent string.
It does not.
It does not.
Eh. A throw back to 15 or something years ago when a rogue/lone/autonomousteamm/orsomething at MS launched start.com, which was a web 2.0 aggregating kind of homepage.
It's weird how they didn't reuse start.com, which now redirects to microsoftstart.com.
It's weird how they didn't reuse start.com, which now redirects to microsoftstart.com.
Looks like the old MSN: https://web.archive.org/web/20010531123934/http://www.msn.co...
it's pretty cool that the Internet Archive has 1M+ snapshots of msn.com, I wonder what other URLs have more captures
Personalized news is the problem.
Will they get news sources to cooperate?
Apple News is great, but they don't have top content anymore. NyTimes is a specific example that I used to be able to read, but can't without paying now. It's like how streaming started out, but now it's a bunch of add on fees.
Sounds like this starts with only MSN?
https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2021/09/07/the-c...
Apple News is great, but they don't have top content anymore. NyTimes is a specific example that I used to be able to read, but can't without paying now. It's like how streaming started out, but now it's a bunch of add on fees.
Sounds like this starts with only MSN?
https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2021/09/07/the-c...
It’s a bit of a digression, but I just learned from this article that the Facebook laughing face gets criticism. This article seems to insinuate that’s why Microsoft replaced it on their service. It seems fairer to say that if you know you’re sharing news then that reaction won’t be needed. Compare that to Facebook where a wider range of content gets shared and you need a wider range of reactions in response.
I hope the "integration" with Windows is optional (even if opt-out). We need concerted pushback and outcry if they try to shove this down as a "required"/ non-disable-able component.
It's fine to try driving some Bing / Edge traffic (like they did with the "News & Interest" crap in Win10) as long as an opt-out remains.
It's fine to try driving some Bing / Edge traffic (like they did with the "News & Interest" crap in Win10) as long as an opt-out remains.
A personalized news feed will feed me what I like but I had much rather prefer: good or bad, serve me the truth.
Remember when these announcements were fun and not filled with dread of privacy and tracking concerns?
I wish these things would have a functionality to just clear it all out and let me start with a blank slate. There are news sources/blogs/etc. that I prefer to follow, and I should be able to just customize it to only those by simply putting in their RSS feeds.
Can I have a personalized Privacy setting? This ad bubble is getting all kinds of weird. Personalized is more like penalized.
it feels like every time I turn around there's a new news widget or whatever announcing itself
Probably a really easy + low-friction way to gather data on user preferences.
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there's some social stuff e.g. Like button. The Personalized page also has a section for comments, but it does not seem like there's a way to comment on an article yet.
Personalized news? Seems like your own RSS feed reader
Ah, yes. Another online service that curates news content and extorts huge fees from the already dying news scene.
I'll give it a few months before questions about content moderation arise.
I'll give it a few months before questions about content moderation arise.
just give us a start button already
can't improve perfection
can't improve perfection
Personalized news feeds destroy that commonality. Undoubtedly, those limited options were (and are) biased, and more solid information is available today. But that commonality had a value independent of conveying information.
Aside from all of that, I don't want news sources trying to predict what I want to read, because a major aspect of my news reading is looking at how various sources are spinning things. I read a lot of material I disagree with. "Services" that try to guess how I prefer to be gaslit are counterproductive.