From Susan [no last name given] at Monday’s WWDC 2018 keynote:
We’ve rebuilt the Stocks app and it’s got a beautiful new design. Of course you can still see the stock prices and the changes at a glance. But we’ve added spark lines—those little charts—that show the stock performance throughout the day. And that’s cool. But are you ready? We are so excited to announce we’re bringing Apple News to Stocks. [Apple staffers applaud.] I’m really excited about that. And the top stories in stocks features business news, curated by the Apple News editors.
My take: If there is a business news stream more polluted with FUD and fanboyism than Apple’s, I haven’t waded into it. You don’t have to convince me that it could use curation. But an editor in Apple’s employ—even one with the best intentions—cannot be expected to curate Apple business news with a free and even hand.
“But an editor in Apple’s employ—even one with the best intentions—cannot be expected to curate Apple business news with a free and even hand.”
And that would be a problem if the Stocks app were the only place for Apple investors to get information. But I welcome the concept as a nice balance to the “leaked report reveals” and “10 nasty surprises in new iOS update” style stories that have appeared on the app (and everywhere else) for years.
You’re right, PED. It’s an obvious conflict of interest.
I think Susan Prescott meant Apple News for stock curates news for all stocks. This would be good., as opposed to, for example, Yahoo finance, which is spammy because Yahoo needs the ad revenue. Conversely, on-line brokerage news feeds are skimpy, most likely because they don’t want to pay for labor-intensive curation. Surely there will some bias, as there is in all news services.
Apple News for stocks seems to be part of bigger content delivery strategy.Call it, “immersive on-line magazine’. By using embedded photos, video clips, AR effects and ML-based customization, Apple delivers a new media that is far superior to glossy physical magazines and far more personalized and interactive than Video or Movies.
I use Apple news and (now…) like it. But I have taken the time to eliminate channels that are useless, inaccurate, misleading, clickbait driven, etc. That means blocking a lot of channels. Got rid of buzzfeed, business insider, etc… Mostly now get news from WaPo, NYT, WSJ– useful.
Everyone knows Apple Business News is curated/edited/filtered by Apple. That fact is openly disclosed and is promoted as a feature, not a bug, of the product. Every reader will know that bias is a risk of the service, Stark Contrast with Google and Facebook, both of which have manipulated algorithms without disclosure in order to rig search results presented as objective. Bias isn’t desirable, but it is unavoidable, and disclosed bias is far less pernicious than undisclosed.
It’s a clear conflict, and I’m okay with it. Much better than undisclosed conflicts and inscrutable algorithms that feed up fake news and articles from aggregators that ripoff their stories without attribution. I can further curate what they already have. And if that doesn’t work, I can check my Twitter feed for news from sources I trust, or heaven forbid, go to bookmarked websites.
I understand the potential issues with Apple News including curated news about Apple itself, just as with news about the New York Times and the Washington Post being in the New York Times and the Washington Post. I’m not sure I see any greater conflict though. It’s good to have alternate sources as well of course (e.g., news about Apple and competitors in Google News, NYT, and WP ).
Chiming in one more time. Sure Apple News will have some bias. But unless you’re fully unplugged, you’ll get bad new regarding Apple from other sources.