from the pseudo-journalistic-infotainment dept
Final 12 months you may recall that Vice Media suffered its closing collapse after years of mismanagement by incompetent, fail-upward brunchlords. The brand new house owners, Savage Ventures, rapidly made it clear they have been going to be even worse than previous Vice administration, firing a ton of proficient writers and editors, and shifting Vice’s focus even more durable towards engagement-chasing infotainment slop.
So it’s not significantly shocking to see a brand new scandal by which Savage Ventures is being accused of randomly deleting “controversial” articles over at its gaming sub-brand Waypoint, a call that has resulted in most of its workers quitting in protest.
Waypoint journalists had written a number of articles about an Australian collective named Collective Shout. Collective Shout insists it’s “a grassroots campaigning motion towards the objectification of girls and sexualization of ladies in media, promoting, and standard tradition.” Its founder proclaims to be feminist, however its techniques mirror these of many evangelical censorship orgs.
The group has taken credit score for a number of campaigns, together with banning Snoop Dog and Eminem from Australia, and a profitable push to cease Goal and Kmart to from selling Grand Theft Auto 5 in Australia. They just lately took credit score for Steam’s removing of a number of sexually express video games and new, stricter content moderation guidelines. PC Gamer suggests the group typically over-inflates its achievements.
Waypoint printed two articles in July concerning the group and its marketing campaign towards Steam: “This Group Takes Responsibility For Steam’s Payment Processor Censorship Policies–They Just Implied ‘Pervert Nerds’ Cause Society’s Problems and “Group Behind Steam Censorship Policies Have Powerful Allies–And Targeted Popular Games With Outlandish Claims.”
Neither of the articles had what look like any errors or significantly controversial claims. Savage Ventures house owners apparently simply acquired involved that the “controversial” nature of the items would harm Google metrics and lose them cash. So in accordance with (now-ex) Waypoint author Ana Valens, they pulled each articles offline with none actual dialog with their authors:
This isn’t shocking conduct from the sort of VC opportunists that hoover up the corpses of as soon as standard media manufacturers, then parade these corpses round in an incoherent gambit to make a fast buck off of clickbait and shallow infotainment (see Sports Illustrated and countless other examples).
These varieties of parents don’t care about journalism, they care about metrics. And even then they’re not even significantly good at that; Vice has been much less and fewer related since its 2024 closing collapse, dropping oceans of expertise. Together with these Waypoint authors, who justifiably quit once their articles were deleted. Defector suggests about 66% of the Waypoint staff, together with managing editor Dwayne Jenkins, have since quit.
The abrupt deletions after all adhere to utterly no journalistic requirements by any means. It’s the half-assed resolution by a bunch of opportunists who’re thinking about clicks and a spotlight, not journalism. And whereas this specific scandal impacted video games journalism, it’s a part of a broader development towards the hollowing out of journalism, one thing being simply exploited by authoritarians and different bullshitters.
It’s extra worthwhile to make a fast buck hanging acquisition offers and pointless mergers for the tax breaks — producing badly automated clickbait and bullshit at historic scale — than it’s to pay actual reporters a residing wage to create precise high quality journalism and attention-grabbing content material. The tip results of that lazy and low cost mindset is in every single place you look. And it’ positively getting worse.
Filed Underneath: ana valens, australia, brunchlords, censorship, journalism, media, nudity, porn, steam, video games, waypoint
Corporations: collective shout, savage ventures, vice media
Source link
