Can we not link to the Daily Mail? January 22, 2014 8:02 PM   Subscribe

Can we not link to the Daily Mail? This FPP consists of a single twitter + daily mail link that has the story in it.

They really are like a mutant UK version of drudge, freep and the NYpost combined. I don't think we should be sending them traffic.

Examples from a recent Daily Mail thread of their willful lies, brazen race-baiting libel and well-poisoning for the UK's political and cultural scene; all of these examples are within the last year.
posted by lalochezia to Etiquette/Policy at 8:02 PM (82 comments total) 11 users marked this as a favorite

Well, here are some other newsmedia that have picked up on the story: HuffPo, DailyDot, TheBlaze... If given a choice, I'd go with the DailyDot myself...
posted by oneswellfoop at 8:20 PM on January 22, 2014


We're not really looking at a blanket ban, but we definitely side-eye them hard when they come up, and I've got no problem with folks posting links there less and flagging them more.
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 8:29 PM on January 22, 2014 [4 favorites]


I support this MeTa as an occasional awareness-raising thing that needs to be done. Fuck the Mail.
posted by laconic skeuomorph at 9:23 PM on January 22, 2014 [24 favorites]


Yeah, no bans, but if you're creating a post please find another source. And if the only source is The Daily Mail, maybe think again about why that might be.
posted by benito.strauss at 10:25 PM on January 22, 2014 [6 favorites]


The web version does have awfully nice photos

(ducks)
posted by KokuRyu at 11:03 PM on January 22, 2014 [3 favorites]


This is an international site and not everybody should be expected to know the editorial stance of every publication in the world. I hear that there are even people here who don't own televisions or know of The Janeane Garofalo. I don't subscribe to the Daily Mail. I don't know that I can get delivery in my country. I'm not saying that you're wrong about them and I'm not saying that I haven't heard awful things about them from other people. But the only example you've given is a link to one of your own prior comments where you call them evil. I think that asking for a ban should require more than this.
posted by ActingTheGoat at 11:04 PM on January 22, 2014 [4 favorites]


I think the "Meta" comment in the original thread is pretty strange. The article, while lurid and sensational, is hardly controversial. The thread wasn't going off the rails (except for the rather incongruous "Meta" comment), so why be so terse and prim about it?
posted by KokuRyu at 11:09 PM on January 22, 2014 [3 favorites]


I've been kinda upset that there has been so much less coverage of Kate Middleton and her hair in the DM lately, so I totally support a complete ban on them until they step it up.
posted by discopolo at 11:40 PM on January 22, 2014 [6 favorites]


A handy and entertaining reminder of why the The Daily Mail is an absolutely terrible source for posts.
posted by batmonkey at 11:53 PM on January 22, 2014 [12 favorites]

I've been kinda upset that there has been so much less coverage of Kate Middleton and her hair in the DM lately
Meanwhile, when's the last time The Telegraph didn't run without a picture of Kate on the front page? Some time in 2009, perhaps?
posted by Sonny Jim at 1:06 AM on January 23, 2014


I can safely say without any hyperbole whatsoever that the Daily Mail is pure evil and that Paul Dacre is the spawn of Satan. These are documented facts. But I'm antsy about an outright ban on any publication. People can flag stuff they don't like or choose not to read it.
posted by billiebee at 1:47 AM on January 23, 2014 [3 favorites]


I also dislike the Daily Mail. But if you're considering political/social attitudes in the UK, you have to remember that The Daily Mail and The Sun are massively popular newspapers. For every print copy of The Guardian sold in the UK, 9 copies of the Daily Mail are sold. (And 11 copies of The Sun). So go ahead and dislike the Mail, but would an official ban not place us rather too firmly in a mefithink echo chamber?
posted by memebake at 2:00 AM on January 23, 2014 [1 favorite]


The other thing that never does anything positive for me is David Brooks. Different kinds of worthless, but both... wait a minute I got a brain-wave. What if we could get David Brooks to write for the Daily Mail? Who do I call to put this wacky notion in motion? Let me get my Rolodex...
posted by From Bklyn at 2:04 AM on January 23, 2014 [1 favorite]


I come here for the mefithink echo chamber. Anything to get away from the gibbering vitriol that spews forth from the Mail.
posted by Ned G at 2:11 AM on January 23, 2014 [2 favorites]


I personally use a little script that makes the mouse cursor back away with a squeak of disgust from every Daily Mail link. Not really, but it wouldn't be hard to code.
posted by hat_eater at 2:16 AM on January 23, 2014 [7 favorites]


"Fuck the Mail/The Mail is an absolutely terrible source for posts/I can safely say without any hyperbole whatsoever that the Daily Mail is pure evil..."

Generally yes, but a ban would have meant we missed this amazing peice in the mail. Frankly I am stunned that it was in the Daily Heil, truly I am gobsmacked.

"... and that Paul Dacre is the spawn of Satan"

I wholeheartedly concur. He is, to use his own terminology, a fucking cunt. (see eyes passim ad nauseum)
posted by marienbad at 2:20 AM on January 23, 2014 [1 favorite]


Also, kittens.
posted by hat_eater at 2:36 AM on January 23, 2014 [3 favorites]


Just install Tea and Kittens and never see the Mail or the Express again. I know I have and it makes everything much nicer, if I ever accidently click an link to the evil that is the Daily Mail I get some lovely kittens.
posted by Gilgongo at 2:37 AM on January 23, 2014 [3 favorites]


While typically hateful, the Mail, whether by accident or design I don’t know, sometimes publish a worthwhile article. For example, I was recently surprised to find a Mail piece by Martin Amis about his late stepmother Elizabeth Jane Howard interesting and enjoyable. I would not be in favour of a blanket ban on links to any specific newspaper’s site.

I was curious to see if MetaFilter had ever been mentioned in the Mail (as a cause of cancer, perhaps), but a search at their site yielded only two references: one to a feature on The face of porn... without make-up which includes one comment taken from “the community web blog MetaFilter,” and the other about the recent Can you crack the code? Web sleuths take just 15 MINUTES to decipher mystery 'cancer-addled ramblings' written by grandmother before she died 18 years ago—an excerpt: “After suggesting a sequence of triple As on the card could represent 'Amen Amen Amen', harperpitt and another user, jessamyn, cracked part of the code, pointing out that the letters matched the Lord's Prayer.”
posted by misteraitch at 2:37 AM on January 23, 2014 [5 favorites]


hat_eater - clearly great minds think alike!
posted by Gilgongo at 2:38 AM on January 23, 2014


The Daily Mail is a hive of scum and villainy. I would feed this pony.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 3:03 AM on January 23, 2014


Reading about a Mefi post on the Daily Mail site is really weird.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 3:22 AM on January 23, 2014 [1 favorite]


This is an international site and not everybody should be expected to know the editorial stance of every publication in the world.

This is, broadly speaking, an English language site, so it's probably fair enough that people should know one of the world's most visited newspaper website's editorial policy. Which is clickbait and parochial outragefilter to its UK market, and paparazzi photos and clickbait to its north American visitors.

So yes, sometimes there will be a story which it can't make unpleasant, and it will present it very attractively, but the bottom line is that it's pandering to your id.
posted by ambrosen at 3:24 AM on January 23, 2014 [1 favorite]


Mefi Wiki: Reputability of the media.
posted by zarq at 3:25 AM on January 23, 2014 [6 favorites]


OK Daily Mail commenters, you got me - this one cracked me up:
"It's a town in Wales."
posted by EndsOfInvention at 3:25 AM on January 23, 2014 [3 favorites]


Some publications are driven by ideological commitment, and that has a systematic effect on their content.

I don't think that's true of the Mail; it's reactionary in practice, not in principle. I think Mail journalists (and I have known some) merely try to give their readers what they think people in that market want. It may be cause for regret, but in general they don't seem to be too far off the mark. It doesn't necessarily mean they themselves share the same prejudices and limitations.

It follows that although a great deal of the content strokes the prejudices of Mrs Angry of Tunbridge Wells (and it is definitely Mrs, not Mr) it's quite possible that good pieces may bob up among the effluent now and then.
posted by Segundus at 3:33 AM on January 23, 2014 [1 favorite]


Crikey, further to what I posted about the Daily Mail's print circulation, the MailOnline site is actually the most visited newspaper web site in the world (at least it was in Dec '12). Higher than the New York Times.
The figures show Mail Online reached 45.3 million people last December, to the Times’s 44.8 million. Trailing them are USA Today at , the Tribune newspapers , and the Guardian. The growth, the editor and publisher of the Mail’s online properties, Martin Clarke, said, has been driven by U.S. traffic.
posted by memebake at 3:36 AM on January 23, 2014 [1 favorite]


I find this "ban the Daily Heil/pure evil!!1!" circlejerk a bit tiresome. Like so many other issues the left talks about obsessively on blogs and social media, it's primarily about signalling your liberal ingroup status.

They did a moving piece on the plight of economic migrants from Bangladesh working in Brick Lane a few days ago. The article was empathetic, and interestingly, so were the top ranked comments (sort by "best").
posted by dontjumplarry at 3:41 AM on January 23, 2014 [11 favorites]


The first three posts on the Blue at this moment are:

Single YouTube link.
Single link to BoredPanda.
Single imgur link.

But as I'm a fan of giving people having a wide variety of information sources and letting them decide on their own which ones to put trust in, I'm okay with this. And not okay with blanket banning a source just because some people have decided all of their content is bad. Someone's accidental clickthrough to Daily Mail isn't going to end the world, put W back in the white house or give the company another million dollars.
posted by kimberussell at 4:14 AM on January 23, 2014 [6 favorites]


Yeah, the DM are all about the plight of economic migrants. A quick Google of "Daily Mail economic migrants" is heartwarming in their concern for their EU brethren.

This is a much better way to check out their headlines.
posted by billiebee at 4:15 AM on January 23, 2014 [6 favorites]


Why not just give the link a label like we use for [SLYT] or [NSFW], something like [Daily Mail] or [SLDM]? Then we can decide for ourselves?

I'm opposed to a blanket ban on links to the DM site or to any other.
posted by chavenet at 4:25 AM on January 23, 2014 [3 favorites]


Nick Davies excellent book "Flat Earth News" has a good discussion of the Daily Mail. One thing he points out is that as it's the most profitable remaining newspaper, it actually has more journalists and does more original reporting than most of the other newspapers. It's less reliant on the "churnalism" of repeating press releases and second-hand news: a lot of the time other newspapers chase the Mail's stories. So, it's not like "drudge, freep": it's an actual newspaper doing actual journalism. (I don't know much about the NYPost)

While it has a higher profile than other right-wing newspapers like the Daily Express, it doesn't seem to be significantly worse in terms of "willful lies, brazen race-baiting libel and well-poisoning". The Daily Mail gets more objections because it has more readers, not necessarily because it's worse.

Are we also going to ban the Daily Express, the Daily Telegraph and the New York Post? Are we really banning it because we want to deny it Metafilter's modest contribution to its ad revenue and PageRank, or because it's a right-wing site and we want Metafilter to be a cosy left-wing bubble?
posted by TheophileEscargot at 4:31 AM on January 23, 2014 [8 favorites]


“the community web blog MetaFilter,”

Hahaha, "web blog."

“After suggesting a sequence of triple As on the card could represent 'Amen Amen Amen', harperpitt and another user, jessamyn, cracked part of the code, pointing out that the letters matched the Lord's Prayer.”

Hahaha, "another user."
posted by payoto at 4:44 AM on January 23, 2014 [1 favorite]


I think I read somewhere that the mefithink echo chamber causes cancer.
posted by Dr Dracator at 4:46 AM on January 23, 2014 [2 favorites]


For what it's worth the DM broke yesterday's news of FBI interviews of players in the Hoboken portion of The Christie Affair. NBC may or may not have been on it first, but the Daily Mail was first to print.
posted by spitbull at 4:47 AM on January 23, 2014


I think I read somewhere that the mefithink echo chamber causes cancer.

But then it cures it, so it's OK.
posted by hat_eater at 4:49 AM on January 23, 2014 [1 favorite]


it's primarily about signalling your liberal ingroup status.

I don't think it is, actually, in the case of the Mail.

In the files of the Press Complaints Commission, you will find records of 687 complaints against the Mail which led either to a PCC adjudication or to a resolution negotiated, at least partially, after the PCC’s intervention. The number far exceeds that for any other British newspaper: the files show 394 complaints against the Sun, 221 against the Daily Telegraph, 115 against the Guardian. The complaints will serve as a charge sheet against the Mail and its editor.

This year, the Mail reported that disabled people are exempt from the bedroom tax; that asylum-seekers had “targeted” Scotland; that disabled babies were being euthanised under the Liverpool Care Pathway; that a Kenyan asylum-seeker had committed murders in his home country; that 878,000 recipients of Employment Support Allowance had stopped claiming “rather than face a fresh medical”; that a Portsmouth primary school had denied pupils water on the hottest day of the year because it was Ramadan; that wolves would soon return to Britain; that nearly half the electricity produced by windfarms was discarded. All these reports were false.


(Guardian writer here, posting in a strictly personal capacity, while eating quinoa)
posted by oliverburkeman at 4:55 AM on January 23, 2014 [27 favorites]


The Daily Mail gets more objections because it has more readers, not necessarily because it's worse.

I don't think that's true.

Some context: Davies' book dates from 2008. Pre-Leveson and phone hacking scandal and well before the peak_churnalism of the Daily Mail/HuffPo/Buzzfeed social media era; and before the explosion of the Mail Online.

Davies notes (p.364) that the Press Complaints Commission was basically useless. He looked through 10 years of complaints and found that the PCC had received 28,227 complaints from members of the public. The PCC refused to consider 90% of them, 25,457, on technical grounds. Without even investigating them. Only 448 complaints in total managed to get a formal adjudication from the PCC, of which more than half were rejected and just 197 upheld.

So that's the context: with the exception of some isolated, high profile libel cases launched by wealthy individuals and companies, the British press could largely print what they wanted on a day to day basis.

The whole discussion of press complaints is within the chapter "Mail Aggression", the early part of which details the story of Michelle and Lisa Taylor, two sisters comprehensively cleared of murdering their friend in 1992, only to be reaccused by the Daily Mail in 2000 in a grossly distorted story Davies shows to be fiction. To cut a long story short: the PCC rejects the sisters' case after 15 months of deliberation on a technicality.

Davies notes that - based on successful complaints - that the Daily Mail provoked justifiable complaint at a rate of 3x that of any other newspaper. Note, The Sun still outsells the Daily Mail in print. In the early part of Davies' research period (i.e. 2000) the Daily Mirror's circulation was about the same as the Daily Mail's.

Davies's point is that the Daily Mail - and others - was/is enabled by a toothless watchdog and the high cost of libel action in which Joe Public has to fight the legal war chest of large corporations.

It's pretty clear that the costs of libel and the toothlessness of the PCC distort the real level of complaint against the Daily Mail. Even so, even with a tiny subset of complaints, the Daily Mail's level of complaints is well ahead of their audience reach.

It is true that the Daily Mail does have some isolated high profile wins - notably its pursuit of the Stephen Lawrence murderers. But big deal. I could stand outside a kebab shop on the Old Kent Road punching each customer in the face as they came out and if I stayed there long enough I'd probably serve justice on a wife beater or a mugger.

Davies cautions that portraying the Daily Mail as ideologically driven is mistaken, and I think he is correct. Where Paul Dacre has knocked every other Fleet St editor into a cocked hat is being extremely skilled at pushing the right buttons to create a commercially compelling read - whether it's a breakfast TV presenter's cellulite or thieving Romanian migrants.

In short: part of what we really hate about the Daily Mail is that people seem to like it and read it.
posted by MuffinMan at 5:07 AM on January 23, 2014 [8 favorites]


part of what we really hate about the Daily Mail is that people seem to like it and read it

Well, that and the whole fascist sympathiser thing
posted by fatfrank at 5:36 AM on January 23, 2014 [1 favorite]


There is a distinction between the newspaper and the website. On the whole, what is objectionable about the newspaper is its dishonesty in pursuing vile - racist, misogynist , homphobic and so on - ends. That may recalibrate soon - there are rumblings that the paper's owners are becoming disenchanted with Dacre, and besides the readership for that sort of thing are aging, and will soon die. At which point, of course, they'll start reading the Daily Express.

What is objectionable about the website (which may contain some of the same editortial content as the paper, though we wouldn't know as we're mostly looking at the Buzzfeed-y links like the original original post) is the "sidebar of shame" - a column of picture links to photographs of women who have violated the law against not having fat legs; where simply leaving the house for a moderately well-known woman is in itself an exhibitionist act; where the same woman simply walking down the street in a state of non-thinness becomes her "flaunting her curves" (the hussy!); and where girls on the cusp between child- and adulthood can be surreptitiously photographed in bikinis, the copy commenting that they are a big girl now - how they have grown! - and insinuating the amount of time remaining before it becomes legal for the elderly readership to fantasize having sexual intercourse with them.

Strangely, this misogynist unpleasantness (which has long been a part of the Mail's editorial content, even before interwebs, although I don't think it was so industrial or so blatant, relying on columnists' words rather than telephoto photographs) is, for reasons I can't explain, why often the majority of the Mail's readership has been women (in 2004 it was 53%). Yes, it appears that what the female readership want from the paper is exuberant misogyny. Something something internalised self-hatred something, I'm sure, but however impressive the gallery might be, the sidebar of shame always makes me feel dirty.

That the AskMe thread turned up there suggests that at least some Mail journalists read Metafilter. Which is a thought, though the feelings of individual journalists might not align with the editorial line they are required to follow. I understand that during the Wapping dispute during the 1980s, some Sun journalists put up a sign in the window that faced onto the picket line: "We work for the lie factory", though even in News International, I'm sure they were protected by some kind of labour agreement. However, given the strides we have made in employer/worker relations since then, I'm certain that any journalist who has a conscience of some kind knows to keep quiet about it if they want to maintain continued employment.
posted by Grangousier at 6:17 AM on January 23, 2014 [4 favorites]


I'm a lot less bothered by the Daily Mail articles than I am many of the Business Insider and Buzzfeed style lazy aggregator links, or the super lulzy joke videos like this.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:21 AM on January 23, 2014 [1 favorite]


I find this "ban the Daily Heil/pure evil!!1!" circlejerk a bit tiresome.

Since "don't categorically ban links to The Daily Mail" seems to be the consensus here, to what circlejerk are you referring? Is this an invitation-only circlejerk?

About the story in the original discussion, I have no idea how to respond to it. What can I say about someone tweeting as the ghost of their dead brother? "You go!"? "How awful!"?
posted by octobersurprise at 6:23 AM on January 23, 2014


it's interesting that the original post asked that we not link to the daily mail, a mod immediately said there would be no ban, and yet a lot of the thread is people twisting their socks about how a ban makes them uncomfortable. i see the thread topic being more like "hey other mefites, lets not." instead of "hey mods, do something."
posted by nadawi at 6:26 AM on January 23, 2014 [3 favorites]


This has all happened before; this will all happen again.
posted by corb at 6:40 AM on January 23, 2014


Is this an invitation-only circlejerk?

Most are.

For Torontonian Mefites, the Daily Mail is like The Sun, but without pesky things like fact-checking or editorial oversight, and without so much hiding of their bias.

Sure, they get things right once in a while. If you wait long enough 1962's calendar will be useful again, too.

I'm in agreement with not placing a blanket ban, but in my ideal stables there would be a pony that if the New Post form caught Daily Fail links a little reminder saying something like "You're linking to the Daily Mail, which has a history of XYZ. Can you find a better source?" would pop up.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 6:41 AM on January 23, 2014 [3 favorites]


Though, is there a reason why the "Reputability of Media" wiki only lists UK, Canadian, and Israeli papers?
posted by corb at 6:42 AM on January 23, 2014


Is this an invitation-only circlejerk?

We're not at the heavy petting stage in this thread yet. It's more of a circletwerk.

That the AskMe thread turned up there suggests that at least some Mail journalists read Metafilter.

The Daily Mail is widely known to pay much better than any other newspaper. For jobbing journalists it is a little island in a sea of content commoditisation driving down the price of journalism. It is not inconceivable that many DM journalists hold their noses and shovel shit like the rest of us.
posted by MuffinMan at 6:44 AM on January 23, 2014 [5 favorites]


is there a reason why the "Reputability of Media" wiki only lists UK, Canadian, and Israeli papers?

Because the wiki is edited by users who shared their particular areas of expertise. And my other guess is that those are the countries that have news media that are most likely to be linked by people who might not know their biases as I'm fairly certain dobbs did not.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 7:15 AM on January 23, 2014 [5 favorites]


TheophileEscargot: "it's an actual newspaper doing actual journalism. "

It's not "actual journalism." It it were, they would be chasing stories and reporting them with journalistic integrity.
posted by zarq at 7:39 AM on January 23, 2014


Look, either the Daily Mail is a shining beacon of journalistic integrity, _or_ its the most evil bunch of vile hacks ever assembled. Its too complicated otherwise.
posted by memebake at 7:41 AM on January 23, 2014 [7 favorites]


jessamyn: " Because the wiki is edited by users who shared their particular areas of expertise. And my other guess is that those are the countries that have news media that are most likely to be linked by people who might not know their biases as I'm fairly certain dobbs did not."

Yep. For transparency's sake, I should say that I did some work on that page a few years ago. Cleaned it up and added in the Israel section.

Have sent a few memails over the years to a handful of users residing in other countries (Australia, Germany, etc.) to ask them if they would like to add to it. No one I reached out to was interested.
posted by zarq at 7:44 AM on January 23, 2014




If "best of the web" includes content from the entertainment category, then we can give the Daily Fail a free ride here. If we're counting it in the journalism category, not so much. But the trouble is...there's not much real journalism in the UK any more.

Pony request: scrolling and flashing marquee titles for FPPs with proper journalism.
posted by Juso No Thankyou at 8:32 AM on January 23, 2014


Oh good we can kick the Daily Mail again. It deserves it.
posted by adamvasco at 8:40 AM on January 23, 2014


I'm a lot less bothered by the Daily Mail articles than I am many of the Business Insider and Buzzfeed style lazy aggregator links, or the super lulzy joke videos like this.

Agreed--my favorite posts are the ones that introduce me to (or at least re-frame) something I wouldn't necessarily have seen on half my friends' Twitter and Facebook feeds already, days before. I think there's sometimes an instinct to say, "Here is this thing that is being discussed everywhere, but it would be even more fun to discuss it with the crowd on Metafilter that I enjoy so much!" Not such a bad impulse. But that really takes the, well, "meta" out of Metafilter.

It's not like every post has to be about a 17th century Flemish feminist botanist whose original woodcarvings were just unearthed after excavation was begun for a controversial gentrification project that might reduce walk-ability. But--background and commentary on the Doge meme? Neato. A single-link, single sentence FPP aimed at a top-10 Buzzfeed video involving cute animal hilarity, where you won't believe what happens next? Ugh. It's more like MomFilter: "hey honey, I thought you might want to see this funny thing!! [that went around originally last week but she just found on the Yahoo home page]."
posted by blue suede stockings at 8:53 AM on January 23, 2014 [3 favorites]


It's more like MomFilter: "hey honey, I thought you might want to see this funny thing!!"

You've helped me put my finger on exactly why those things drive me batshit.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 8:59 AM on January 23, 2014 [5 favorites]


Is this an invitation-only circlejerk?

I hate to be one of those germ-o-phobes, but I really would hope so. Plus, are you going to let any old urchin diver, miner or dish washer in and just pretend those rough hands aren't a distraction?

I'm opposed to a blanket ban on links to the DM site or to any other.
posted by chavenet


Eponysterical?
posted by yerfatma at 9:11 AM on January 23, 2014


Agreed--my favorite posts are the ones that introduce me to (or at least re-frame) something I wouldn't necessarily have seen on half my friends' Twitter and Facebook feeds already, days before.

Yeah, but I think we forget that not all of us share the same Twitter and Facebook feeds. Things obnoxiously common to some may be new to others.
posted by corb at 9:15 AM on January 23, 2014


blue suede stockings: " Agreed--my favorite posts are the ones that introduce me to (or at least re-frame) something I wouldn't necessarily have seen on half my friends' Twitter and Facebook feeds already, days before. I think there's sometimes an instinct to say, "Here is this thing that is being discussed everywhere, but it would be even more fun to discuss it with the crowd on Metafilter that I enjoy so much!" Not such a bad impulse. But that really takes the, well, "meta" out of Metafilter. "

The thing is, not all of us are tuned in the way you're describing. I've learned about things on MeFi (like the 'Doge' meme) that I would probably never have encountered anywhere else.

"Discussed everywhere" isn't going to mean the same thing to all users.
posted by zarq at 9:22 AM on January 23, 2014 [3 favorites]


Or, what corb said. :)
posted by zarq at 9:22 AM on January 23, 2014


It's okay, I've already accepted that you don't see my posts. Either that, or you hate Battlestar Galactica. ;)
posted by corb at 9:24 AM on January 23, 2014 [1 favorite]


Ha! This is what I get for reading mefi on my phone and not following links :)
posted by zarq at 9:31 AM on January 23, 2014


Well, that and the whole fascist sympathiser thing.

So, Hitler wrote a fan letter to the Daily Mail? Huh. I wonder if it's framed and hanging on a wall somewhere at the main office.
posted by Atom Eyes at 9:44 AM on January 23, 2014


The "funny" thing about Lord Rothermere, who owns the Daily Mail, is that for all the paper's posturing about British values and spongers and overpaid civil servants and the profligacy of Europe, the man has been a tax exile for years and lives in France.
posted by MuffinMan at 10:08 AM on January 23, 2014


This is, broadly speaking, an English language site, so it's probably fair enough that people should know one of the world's most visited newspaper website's editorial policy. Which is clickbait and parochial outragefilter to its UK market, and paparazzi photos and clickbait to its north American visitors.

That's not fair. To the readers, I mean, not the Mail. I can guess the differences between the NYT and the NYP (one is for yuppie hipsters, one is for...people who like Heat without the irony?) but I couldn't tell you what stance most US or Canadian or Aussie papers take on things. Do the American readers here know about Page 3 - not the Wikipedia definition, but the cultural significance and the ongoing debate? Possibly not, and I wouldn't necessarily expect them to, because they're in a different country where they're probably slagging off the National Enquirer or the Janesville Argus or something.

If links from The Poke or The Daily Mash start becoming a thing here, though, I'm going to start having to learn how to make plug-ins.
posted by mippy at 10:23 AM on January 23, 2014 [2 favorites]


They did a moving piece on the plight of economic migrants from Bangladesh working in Brick Lane a few days ago.

Was it moving enough to make you anti-immigration? Because that was the point of it.
posted by Sys Rq at 10:25 AM on January 23, 2014


KokuRyu: The web version does have awfully nice photos

They specialize in eye-catching material of all sorts, from link-bait headlines to scandalous photos, or just posting a lot of large photos and a few lines of text between images. They even take the time to tweak the coloring photos that don't have enough contrast already (original photo on Flickr).


EndsOfInvention: Reading about a Mefi post on the Daily Mail site is really weird.

As noted in the comments of this MeTa thread, the "puzzle geeks" of MetaFilter have gotten a significant amount of (internet) media attention for this.
posted by filthy light thief at 10:38 AM on January 23, 2014


While the Daily Mail can sometimes do the right thing (the Lawrence "Murderers" front page is foremost in my mind), they are much more often awful and mistruthy when it comes to news. I won't knowingly click on a Daily Mail link.
posted by Thing at 11:30 AM on January 23, 2014


This seems like as good a context as any to ask, do we all know about donotlink?
posted by clavicle at 12:34 PM on January 23, 2014 [3 favorites]


No to a blanket ban, yes to the side-eye and encouraging people to look for other sources whenever possible. Thus spake me.
posted by Scientist at 12:48 PM on January 23, 2014 [1 favorite]


I'm with Scientist-- I will say that for whatever reason their photos for science and archaeology articles are usually far better and more extensive than those available elsewhere. I don't know if they have a better photo sub or they're paying more or they're just getting dodgy photos or what but yeah, I will sometimes go there in the hopes of finding photos. I usually go elsewhere for additional information or confirmation of facts.
posted by jetlagaddict at 1:00 PM on January 23, 2014 [1 favorite]


You know, r_n's comment has made me curious. Are there any domains that are officially banned from FPPs or comments? Either automatically wherein the server will prevent those links being made, or by policy wherein moderators are instructed to always delete those links if they see them? If there are any, I would be further curious to hear of any notable examples of domains or categories of domains that are banned.
posted by Scientist at 2:19 PM on January 23, 2014


Absolutely nothing is deleted by the server. I think way back in the day when we had sort of a fake beef going with littlegreenfootballs there may have been something we did, or someone's links that got redirected to Plastic.com (oh wait, I think that's what you saw when we banned you by IP - a thing which we no longer do) but we do nothing like that nowadays. But as mods we only delete links to what we consider racists or sexist hate sites which is a very short list of sites, with no actual URLs that I can think of offhand except Stormfront. As with everything else, it's case-by-case. Usually what we've seen is that someone looking for a source for something winds up finding it on a site like that and accidentally links to the site without knowing what the rest of the site is about. Or people link to it in a "Look at these assholes" way which is usually not a good link/post to begin with.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 2:24 PM on January 23, 2014


It's more of a circletwerk.

This thread is officially high quality
posted by emptythought at 3:17 PM on January 23, 2014


To be totally serious though, while i'm not really seeing the circlejerk here, i do understand why some people would roll their eyes and go ugh at another mention of the daily mail being shit. It absolutely is something that gets said at least once a day anywhere or time you get a bunch of lefty liberal freethinker types in one place.

It's one of those things, at the same 101 level of that sort of group as "don't use gay pejoratives as an insult" that really can feel, even more so than that example by a fur piece, like it just came up so everyone could high five and slap eachother on the back and go "yep, what a shitpile it is!".

Going "Circlejerk? I don't see any circlejerk! calm down, jeeze" is almost a bit disingenuous since i find it moderately hard to believe that the people saying that don't know the exact tiresome tape loop those people are groaning about.

I feel like everyone knows it's crap. In the rare instance they post something interesting, i don't have a problem with seeing it on here. The backlash against them is arguably as tiresome or more than the actual crappiness they exhibit 99% of the time. It's like the whole "EWW VERTICAL VIDEOS" thing the internet at large likes to do.

filthy light thief: They specialize in eye-catching material of all sorts, from link-bait headlines to scandalous photos, or just posting a lot of large photos and a few lines of text between images. They even take the time to tweak the coloring photos that don't have enough contrast already (original photo on Flickr).

While there's definitely some smart exposure gain of the lightroom/aperture variety in there, a lot of that just looks like color temperature and/or white balance correction from the overly-red original.

I see what you're saying that they cranked up the brightness a bit, it's obvious by the now slightly blooming top right quadrant... but i end up being kind of confused what's actually wrong here? It feels really reaching somehow. There's got to be a lot better examples of them being clickbait attention horses or whatever.
posted by emptythought at 3:26 PM on January 23, 2014 [3 favorites]


I often don't pop back into threads I create and wish I hadn't for this one.

I've little doubt that if I had linked only to the Twitter account as I originally planned (most of my posts are single links), someone'd be harping on that, too.

You people are uptight and it is tiresome.
posted by dobbs at 7:28 PM on January 23, 2014 [2 favorites]


You people are uptight and it is tiresome.

MetaTalk is a 100% optional part of the site for everyone but the mods. This wasn't a personal callout of you. There's really no need to show up just to be shirty.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 8:12 PM on January 23, 2014 [3 favorites]


I feel like this MeTa could have been made without singling out dobbs' post, which is actually pretty interesting. I don't entirely blame him for being irritated. It may not have been intended personally, but I can see why it might be hard not to take it that way.
posted by Jess the Mess at 11:04 PM on January 23, 2014 [2 favorites]


The thing is, then it would seem like a really passive aggressive non-callout because dobbs' post would be on the front page. It would be really wink-wink nudge-nudge.

those can work, but half the time i see them it's just like "oh, nice, this is OBVIOUSLY about that post except not". within 10 comments it would have been the subject of the thread because someone would mention it or link to it.
posted by emptythought at 12:09 AM on January 24, 2014


As much as I would dearly love to expunge the Daily Mail from existence, I too have to agree with the current policy of preferring other sources, and occasional reminders (like this MeTa) to that effect.

I think it's particularly insidious precisely because it does sometimes have innocuous stories and original content, but a ban would be counterproductive if anything.
posted by lucidium at 7:36 AM on January 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


> The Daily Mail is a hive of scum and villainy. I would feed this pony.

Are you in favor of banning just this hive of scum and villainy or all hives of scum and villainy? If the latter, things are going to be pretty quiet around here.
posted by jfuller at 3:13 PM on January 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


MeFi.
posted by laconic skeuomorph at 3:28 PM on January 26, 2014 [2 favorites]


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