News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Microsoft launches a personalized news service, Microsoft... by djlewald on Thursday September 09, 2021 @03:52PM (#28473904)
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.
Re:Microsoft launches a personalized news service, Microsoft... by IncRnd on Thursday September 09, 2021 @04:06PM (#28474050)
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.

Re:Microsoft launches a personalized news service, Microsoft... by bitwize on Thursday September 09, 2021 @04:14PM (#28474131)
The layout is simple and clean... so beautiful!
Re:Microsoft launches a personalized news service, Microsoft... by somebodythere on Thursday September 09, 2021 @04:36PM (#28474364)
Microsoft: making it harder, better, faster, stronger.
Re:Microsoft launches a personalized news service, Microsoft... by reaperducer on Thursday September 09, 2021 @04:30PM (#28474296)
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.

Re:Microsoft launches a personalized news service, Microsoft... by exochrono on Thursday September 09, 2021 @04:58PM (#28474569)
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..
Re:Microsoft launches a personalized news service, Microsoft... by Wavelets on Thursday September 09, 2021 @04:41PM (#28474408)
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.
Re:Microsoft launches a personalized news service, Microsoft... by zdragnar on Thursday September 09, 2021 @04:07PM (#28474063)
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.
Re:Microsoft launches a personalized news service, Microsoft... by Tenoke on Thursday September 09, 2021 @04:49PM (#28474480)
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.