News Sites That Predict the Future
The joy of Twitter is that is that snippets of conversation that one has can lead to thinking about a topic that perhaps one wouldn’t necessarily give much thought time to. For example, the antecedence of this particular ramble was the tweet exchanges between Joanna Geary and me. Joanna is a journalist at The Birmingham Post and had been attending today’s JEE Camp in Birmingham along with Pete Ashton and Tom Scotney (her colleague at The Post). These are folks that I regular follow on Twitter.
At the un-conference (as it was called) were the people responsible for the Hubdub website and as I understand it is a news forecaster that allows users to track news stories and predict their outcomes. I believe that there are quite a few of this type of site in the United States and it is interesting that although Hubdub is based in Edinburgh it targets US news. I don’t know much about hubdub so any reservations that I may have is not directly aimed at them.
The reservations I have simply stems from the fact that the news forecasting is done in the form of questions. For example, “Will Hillary Clinton be awarded delegates from Florida and Michigan?” The idea then is that users will vote “yes” or “no” depending on their opinion. On the face of it there doesn’t seem be anything particular worrying about this. However and I will also add a huge but, it doesn’t require a particularly devious mind to use questions as a method of attacking and smearing a person’s character.
We have seen how easy it has been for Barack Obama to be placed in a defensive position because of a photograph in the public domain. It is for this reason that my initial reaction to predictive news was “when does predicting become gossiping?” Furthermore, can it be used by those with the means and power to character assassinate people they feel are a nuisance?
I have yet to really look into the whole issue of news forecasting and so I will be quite happy for others to disagree with me but these are my immediate thoughts. I may have completely contradictory ones by tomorrow. But such is my nature.
One of the big things about Nigel’s presentation of Hubdud was a decision whether this was actually some kind of news service, or a game. He said he eventually concluded that it was a game. Whether that makes any difference to the impact that a vote on the site has, I don’t really know I’m afraid…
Oh no! ‘Hubdud’? Typo I promise. I was very impressed with HubduB, as was everyone else at JEECamp
I believe Nigel Eccles was part of the Betfair site so Hubdub is aimed at an audience who enjoy news and enjoy betting but who don’t enjoy losing real money.
I still need to ponder and wonder about this since it takes me quite a while to make my mind up about certain things.
It is an interesting point. To be honest we’ve only seen one or two examples of users trying to create inferences in the quesions. E.g. http://tinyurl.com/3×97bh
As we can’t objectively settle these they get voided.
Additionally, one of the requirements of new questions is that it follows an existing news story. Users can’t just create a potential news story.
The other possibility is that users bid up the price of something that is highly likely to be untrue. Unfortunately if they do that other users will see the price is out of line and push it back. The scammer then loses his/her $’s and therefore ability to move the price.
On the news site v game, my feeling is that we are currently 30% news site, 70% game.
Thank you for clariying the moderating guidelines that you use on the site.
The fact that it is very much a game, a fantasy league of news as it were, does make me take a different view on hubdub. If I was a gambling man (and I am at every given opportunity), I expect to some activity on the site from myself.
However, you have pointed out how easy it is to use questions to direct people to a particular way of thinking. But with regards to hubdub, I’m pleased to see a high level of self-regulation.
All the very best in the venture.