Rant Time: News Networks are Failing Us!
This rant is a long, long time coming. News network media has been in serious decay for going on at least a decade. Recently, however, news networks are now a danger to the United States and, specifically, to the world… just as the GOP is decaying democracy itself. The whole country is in a state of decay… entropy, if you will. News media is not an exception to this state of decay. In fact, news media is ONE cause of it.
Let’s rant!
Cable News Networks
The vast majority of news is now obtained by viewers using one of the 3 main cable news networks, CNN, MSNBC and Fox News, with broadcast news sources like ABC News and CBS News leaning into this same exact problem. Even audio podcast sources like NPR, Reuters and the Associated Press are also throwing their hat into this same overkill ring.
You might be asking, “But aren’t there now 4 cable news networks?” Yes, the newest addition to cable news, [NEWSNATION] (formerly WGN), is also making a play for a slice of the cable news audience. However, [NEWSNATION] is still still too new to be considered fully. Yet this up-and-coming new channel is making all of the same mistakes as the incumbent news channels. Nothing news to see here, move along.
[NEWSNATION]
Let’s discuss this newest addition to cable news, [NEWSNATION]. This news company, which was born out of WGN in the long past, is now trying to resurrect an older WGN national news idea into NewsNation (note, the caps, formatting and brackets will be dropped for the remainder of this article).
NewsNation claims to offer a more fair and balanced approach to news reporting. Yet, NewsNation is falling into the same exact unbalanced and nonsensical news traps as every other cable news network. One only needs to watch NewsNation to understand its imbalance and unfairness in its reporting. If NewsNation cannot get itself on the right track when the rest of the news networks are doing these same exact wrong things, then 24 hour news networks cannot and will not survive.
I had hopes that NewsNation would take a different tack from CNN, MSNBC and Fox News. Unfortunately, NewsNation management has decided to adopt all of the same wrong postures and same failing strategies that the rest of the so-called news channels have adopted. Come on guys, try something different!
National Politics vs War
All of these news networks get so deep in the weeds with tunnel vision, that they cannot understand how unbalanced and unfair their news reporting actually is. These channels all seem to think their reporting is fair and balanced. How balanced can news reporting be when EVERY SINGLE NEWS CHANNEL focuses solely on one story 24 by 7 to the exclusion of all else?
It would be one thing if only one of these news channels chose to delve deep into a topic. When every single one of these channels simultaneously choose to dive deep and focus their entire 24 hour news cycle to a single topic, that’s called myopia or tunnel vision.
What’s worse is that this Israeli conflict is a regional conflict that has existed for decades. There is absolutely nothing new about this conflict. This conflict had been in hiatus most recently, but that doesn’t make this conflict new. It is different in how it began this time, yes, but it’s the same old religious arguments rehashed all over again. And yet, CNN, MSNBC and the rest are reporting this conflict as though it’s never existed before (said in total surprise). There’s nothing surprising or new about any of this conflict.
This specific Israeli clash also isn’t the problem behind this national news reporting crisis. It’s simply a victim of and catalyst for just how crappy, inane, unintelligent and one-tracked our national news cycles have become.
Gaza Strip Reporting
As of this article, Israel is now at war with Hamas over, once again, the Gaza Strip. The Gaza Strip is a contentious bit of “holy” land that both the Palestinians and the Jewish claim for their respective religions. This small bit of land, which is approximately twice the size of Washington D.C., has always been claimed by both religious sects as “holy land” under their religious doctrines. As a result of these two separate religions claiming this same small piece of land, tensions erupt, tempers flare and eventually missiles get launched. Any person who chooses to live on this contentious bit of land must choose to live with the consequences of that decision. You could choose to live anywhere else safer, but CHOOSING to live on the Gaza strip comes with it the very real possibility of death and destruction for you, your family and your loved ones. This most recent Israeli and Hamas clash proves this point out.
Each side believes the other shouldn’t be entitled to live on or inhabit this piece of land. That the land exists to serve only one of the two religions. Because both sides tend to wholly believe in this claptrap, this war will never truly end… a war over a silly little piece of real estate that, may or may not at some point in the past been used by any specific religion. Any holy nature of that land is long, long past. Yet, both the Palestinians and the Israelis feel the need to continually lob missiles at one another, killing and wounding many… all over this smallish piece of real estate.
Why is this historical backdrop important? Because the war over the Gaza strip has never, ever ended. It may have gone into a brief (in historical terms) remission, but it has never firmly ended. More than this, it can never truly end so long as both factions remain.
Tunnel Vision Reporting
News networks are treating this Israeli vs Hamas war as though it’s brand new, like it’s never ever existed before. Anyone with half a brain knows the insincerity of this reporting. Additionally, someone (stupid) at each one of these news networks mistakenly believes that the Gaza strip conflict is something that America needs to know about and watch 24 by 7 around the clock for days on end. Hint: we don’t need or want this.
Instead, what we as viewers are being treated to (no, being tortured with) is a tunnel vision news reporting. Worse, every single news outlet is doing this same exact thing. Instead of reporting (f)actual news around the United States, news which is way more important to United States viewers; instead we’re getting play-by-play, missile-by-missile, Israeli-by-Palestinian reporting with boots on the ground in Israel. This is reporting that doesn’t directly impact most Americans, except for Israeli-American or Palestinian-American compatriots or for those few military enthusiasts. If you’re that much of a military aficionado, go hop a plane and head over to the Gaza strip. Enjoy your up close and personal view. No one is stopping you. For that matter, if you’re that much of a military enthusiast, go hop another plane and head to the Ukraine front lines.
The entirety of the Jewish population is a demographic that accounts for just 4.5% of the entire United States Population. Israeli-American immigrants might account for as few as 140,000 in total (0.0424% of the entire US population). The Palestinian population numbers around 170,000 (0.05152% of the entire US population). Who knows how many are military enthusiasts there are… but news networks shouldn’t ever cater their news reporting to this small group of macabre viewers.
Why are these numbers important? They’re important to identify the total possible number of people who might be interested in watching news on this topic AND who live IN the United States. MSNBC, CNN and Fox News are primarily news networks targeting United States viewers, a total population of around 330 million, with a much smaller number watching. CNN additionally offers a broader and separate CNN International news channel designed specifically to showcase international news across the globe. CNN, if you want to broadcast international 24 by 7 coverage, use your CNN International channel instead.
However, every last one of these news networks has decided to devote 100% of their 24 by 7 coverage to this age old Israeli + Palestinian conflict, choosing to ignore all other important news reporting (save the occasional political snippet). It doesn’t matter what time of the day or night you tune in, you can be guaranteed that within 5 minutes or less, the news host will speak or the chyron will display the word “Hamas”, “Israel” or “Gaza”.
THIS is tunnel vision news reporting. There is also nothing fair or balanced about operating tunnel vision reporting, especially when EVERY SINGLE NEWS CHANNEL is doing this. When you can tune into a news network and hear about Hamas at 8am, 12pm, 7pm, 11pm or 5am, news reporting is in tunnel vision mode; a mode that is to the detriment of the United States and its viewers. It might even be considered a national safety problem.
Demographics and Viewership
When the biggest audience you can expect over this conflict is perhaps 5% of your total viewers, including both Palestinian-American immigrants, Israeli-American immigrants and the broader Jewish population (a sub-population who might or might not hold interest in that area’s conflict), you’re barking up the wrong tree by devoting 24 by 7 tunnel vision reporting to Israel. Even then, America has ~330 million total population, but only a small portion of those viewers are actually watching 24 by 7 cable news.
Fox News claims to have the biggest audience share at 1.57 million simultaneous viewers. Unfortunately, we also know that Fox News lies like a cheap rug. Any viewership numbers that Fox News claims are likely falsified, either because the Murdochs have paid off the statistic gathering company or they own that company allowing them to fabricate any numbers they wish. The point is, Fox News very likely has way fewer than its purported 1.57 million viewers claimed. Fox News has proven itself to be untrustworthy. Yes, that would also include fabricating its viewership numbers.
The point here is that even if 1.57 million viewers is anywhere close to real (and we know that it isn’t), 5% of that is 78,000 simultaneous viewers.
This means that any news network that chooses to devote 24 by 7 news coverage to Israel, does so to appeal to, at most, 78,000 Americans. Even then, that number is likely drastically lower… perhaps even as low as 10,000 – 20,000 people. Seriously, 24 hour coverage solely to interest around 20k viewers? Are news producers really this insane? I guess so.
And yet, these news networks wonder why we are seeing…
News Reporter Hostages and Deaths?
Hello! You’ve devoted your entire 24 hours of news cycle coverage into an age old, no-holds-barred, Geneva-convention-breaking set of warring factions… all for the benefit of less than 50,000 viewers? These factions have been warring for as long as everyone today on this planet has been alive… longer even. This is a Jihad, a holy war, a religious conflict. Do you think that either of these two sides legitimately believe in such things as the Geneva convention? While many of these spokespersons state that they uphold this convention, what they say and what they do are two drastically different things.
It’s easy to state that a given nation state upholds the Geneva convention, it’s an entirely separate thing to actually do it. You need to look at their actions, not at their words. Words are easily empty platitudes, especially from that area of the world. When ages old religious wars recur, specifically in that specific area of the world, the war, devastation and death toll to the other side is what’s important, not upholding some arbitrary convention that neither side agreed to when the war originally began.
When reporter hostages are taken and when some of these reporters are summarily executed, you can’t then wonder why it happens. You can blame them. You can point fingers at them. You can even yell at them. However, the fault here is on the news network management team for insinuating THEIR staff into a dangerous age old conflict. Your news network chose to insert people into a very dangerous situation and then you wonder why some reporters die? Get with the program.
Should News Networks Report on the Israel conflict?
Yes, but do so with an appropriate amount of designated time based sanely on the demographics who might show interest in watching. 24 by 7 coverage of ANY event needs to be considered carefully. Yet, it’s entirely clear that no producer or management team member at these organizations is questioning this decision.
Let’s understand why it’s important to temper coverage. First and foremost, this is NOT an American conflict. The United States has no stake in the Israeli “war”. While America is an ally to Israel, that ally status doesn’t include the United States immediately jumping into this age old conflict nor should we become directly involved in that nation state’s religious conflicts.
America has no interest or stake in Israel other than our ally status. While the American military can help Israel in small ways, it is up to Israel to fully manage its own conflicts, in the same way as Ukraine must manage its own conflict with Russia. We can give aid and support (whatever hands-off form that takes) to Israel as an ally, that doesn’t and shouldn’t include American military boots-on-the-ground or planes-in-the-air support against Hamas. That conflict is all on Israel.
News Networks and Ukraine
News networks have long given up 24 by 7 coverage of the Ukraine war. It started out with 24 by 7 play by play coverage, but soon (within a month or so) gave way to United States news coverage. The Ukraine war coverage is now placed where it should be… with maybe 5-10 minutes of coverage every one to two hours.
This is the amount of coverage Israel should be given right now. In other words, the news networks are giving too much coverage to the Israeli conflict. It’s not like this conflict started just recently. This conflict has been in progress for years and years and years. Sure, it’s once again erupted recently, but it’s a conflict that’s been ongoing for many years.
TOO MUCH COVERAGE!
Here we have finally arrived at the entire point of this article. News channels are now beating a dead horse with the unnecessary and improper choice of sweeping 24 by 7 coverage over situations that honestly warrant at most 10 minutes of coverage once an hour… and they’ve been playing this over-reporting game for several years. Not only are they beating this specific story to death, they’re bludgeoning every single story like this into dust. News coverage must be tempered. Tempered with good taste. Tempered against the demographics watching. Tempered against the interest by viewers (i.e., ratings). It must be given the seriousness of coverage that all news is given. BUT… news coverage must not preempt all other news for days on end, especially when that coverage is over a situation that is not in the United States AND a situation that is an ongoing conflict that has roots in years long past.
While all of us in America grieve for those affected in this unfortunate Israeli-Hamas situation, there’s a substantial difference between grieving and spending so much time in a news cycle that news networks beat their news coverage to death.
News producers need to take a long hard look, not only at themselves, but at their news networks. By having tunnel vision reporting over events like this one; events which ARE serious, but are also not alone worthy of 24 by 7 news coverage, news networks are now failing America hard.
By preempting news stories of equal import within the United States solely to cover a situation outside of the United States with excessive coverage, Americans are being left in the dark as to what’s happening in their own states. That’s not news reporting. That’s neglect. That’s wilful abandonment of each news network’s responsibilities to cover ALL news equally and fairly.
There can be no equal and fair when news networks willfully abandon coverage of domestic news in favor of Israel… a country that has almost nothing to do with America.
NewsNation, MNSBC, CNN and Fox News are all negligent in their willful abandonment of America, and American News. It’s actually been this way for a long time, but this story illustrates just how quick and wilful news services are to abandon their jobs of reporting ALL news… and worse, arbitrarily elevating minor news stories by self-labeling them as “major”.
Political Coverage
Prior to the Israeli coverage, these news networks have long had tunnel vision over all things Washington D.C. Again, instead of covering important news around the United States, these 4 networks have willfully abandoned this coverage in lieu of Donald Trump, MAGA and Joe Biden. Almost every word that has come out out of any of these network’s news anchors mouths in the last 12 months has been to do with one of those 3 topics: Trump, MAGA or Biden… until Hamas diverted them and Ukraine for a short time before that.
American news coverage doesn’t revolve around Washington D.C or politics or Israel or Ukraine. When the Israeli situation hit, all of these networks full-bore moved their political reporting firehose to the Israeli conflict and away from politics. What that now means is that D.C. politics might see 10 minutes of coverage in a day compared to the remainder of the 1430 minutes devoted to Israel (less their excessive commercial breaks).
Turning the News Off
When I tune into a news channel and within the first 5 minutes see the word “Hamas”, I tune out and go do something else. How many times can a news network say the same thing or reiterate the same point? At this moment, these news networks are now repeating the same diatribe over and over and over and over summed up to the following… “Israel good, Hamas BAD.”
Once you, as a news producer, can condense 24 hours worth of news into 4 small words, you’ve got a major problem to resolve. How many ways and times can a news network say the same 4 words?
Human Interest
Here’s one sickening turn of events in news reporting. A turn of events where news networks are also now failing us hard. When news networks can no longer figure out a way to say those same four words, they decide to vomit up some tear-jerker family story about the death of a loved one. We get it, people died in the conflict. We also grieve for their loss.
Instead, news networks feel the need to consume a large swath of their 24 hour OVER coverage with incidental and mostly irrelevant human interest stories. Oh yes, let’s pick a family and focus on THEIR story. Let’s understand how the mother and father became a shield to block gunfire for their children. It’s a terrible story, we get it. It’s human interest. Unfortunately, it exploits these family situations for ratings BY that news network. What the news network is doing to and with this family is far, far worse than anything else these news networks do. It exploits these unfortunate situations and those people involved to further a news network’s ratings, not help out the family. Human interest stories involving death should NEVER be considered news and should never be part of the news cycle.
Human interest stories have a place, but only when strictly labeled as human interest. Human interest stories should never be inserted in replacement of news coverage, especially in times of conflict reporting.
24 Hours In A Day
There are approximately 17 hours available for a news reporting day (subtracting the approximate 7 hours of commercials). Each of these news networks break their reporting up into blocks of hours using specific news hosts. You’d think that at least ONE of these hour blocks could give us a break from the Hamas cycle and report on (f)actual news around the nation. Instead, you’d be wrong. Every single block with every single news host CHOOSES to report on Israel and Hamas or Washington DC or Ukraine. Insanity!
When these channels go into tunnel vision mode, every single news program and news host rehashes the same exact information that the previous news host has already stated. It’s a vicious cycle that never ends. Until a news manager or producer decides to finally kill this news cycle entirely, we must suffer through this insufferable, constant barrage of the repetitive information, hour after hour after hour, day after day after day, maybe even week after week.
As a viewer, you could tune in and within 5 minutes get all of the information you need about that situation. You’d also be good for the remainder of that 24 hour period.
What this news over-coverage problem ultimately causes is viewers tuning out because of this repetition problem. It further means that real breaking news gets lost because fewer and fewer people are tuning in regularly. It also means that news viewers must turn to radio news or other alternative sources of news to avoid watching this homogeneous liquefied and over blended news coverage.
Will news channels ever get back to sensible coverage?
I can’t predict this. At some point, the pendulum may swing back. When it comes to commercial news networks like these, it’s sink or swim. The ratings will need to drop so low that the news producers have no choice but to begin making drastic programming decisions; decisions that will need to run counter to the news programming cycle being regurgitated on the other news networks.
Just because another news network chooses to do something stupid, that doesn’t mean every news network needs to do the exact same stupid thing and/or run the same exact amount of coverage. In fact, it’s better if not all news networks are doing the same thing. Let some of the channels deep dive into specific coverage, let others remain on a normal news cycle, reporting on ALL stories around the nation, interspersed with international news occasionally.
Fair and balanced reporting means reporting on all stories of interest, not latching onto one single story and tying it to your network 100% of the time. It seems incredibly stupid for every single news network to jump into tunnel vision reporting on one single topic. Yet, here we are.
News producers need to rethink this tunnel vision strategy going forward and grow a backbone. Producers need to stop torpedoing their own news channel’s ratings (and jeopardizing their own career) over this insane tunnel-vision single-news-topic round-the-clock stupidity.
PLEASE, finally get this memo.
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Review: Is Fiverr a scam?
Fiverr is one in a new generation on “Work for Hire” sites (sometimes known as freelancer sites) that have recently sprung up, while they’re also hoping to turn a big profit off of the backs of buyers and sellers. Let’s explore whether Fiverr is a scam or legitimate.
Work For Hire
While Fiverr might think it is something kind of special, it isn’t. There have been plenty of “Work For Hire” kinds of sites throughout the years going back to the early 2000s. There’s nothing really new about this kind of site.
To explain more, Fiverr’s “Work For Hire” marketplace has two distinct type of visitors: Buyers and Sellers. This means that a person visiting the site could be one or both of these roles.
As a buyer, you visit the site looking for a specific kind of service to buy. For example, maybe you would like to have someone write a blog article for you. You can then find an author/seller who is selling such a service, then contract their services at an agreed price, place an order, then wait for delivery of the article… at which time payment is due.
As a seller, you use your talents to place your authoring services up for sale and reap monetary rewards (such that they are) for providing a needed service to the buyer community.
It’s a reasonable idea and a potentially great business model, if such a site is correctly designed. Here’s where Fiverr fails hard.
Buyers
As with any site of this type (or really any site in general that offers logins and passwords), certain expectations are set (and must be met). Any site with user logins must be willing to maintain and manage these user logins themselves, including appropriate application of Terms and Conditions by taking action against violators, abusers, harassers and scam artists. After all, it is Fiverr’s servers and system, therefore it falls on Fiverr to ensure users of the service act according to the Terms and Conditions while using that platform. This is a very basic expectation that all sites must meet.
For example, when you create a Google account, there’s an expectation that Google will both vet and maintain its new user signups appropriately. For the most part, Google does this well… except when the individual is under 13 years of age. That means that when Google identifies someone violating its rules of conduct (usually laid out in Terms and Conditions and/or Terms of Service documents or possibly other documents also), it will take action against a violating account up to and including termination from the service. However, Google has refrained from either detecting or deleting accounts created by users under the age of 13, for whatever questionable reason. I digress.
Along these same lines, Fiverr’s management is not only exceedingly naïve, they’re extremely inexperienced in running a user signup based platform like Fiverr and it shows. Why? Because the site’s weak signup system and rigid Terms and Conditions forces far too much of Fiverr’s buyer vetting work down upon its sellers. Instead of taking care to properly manage its buyers, it forces sellers to shoulder that responsibility and take this work onto themselves. As someone so rightly said, “Ain’t nobody got time for that”.
Sellers
As a seller, you would think that your primary job and focus is to sell your service to would-be buyers. While that is a portion of what a seller is expected to do on Fiverr, Fiverr’s unreasonable and overreaching Terms and Conditions require the seller to take on a whole lot more burden than they should, such as Buyer vetting, Buyer management and, yes, being “Academic Police”.
One egregious mistake in Fiverr’s Terms and Conditions is its overreaching “Academia” clause. One might think, shouldn’t we protect academic institutions and/or students? Well, no. Academic institutions are responsible for protecting themselves. Students are responsible for protecting their own best interests. It’s no one’s responsibility to protect any specific academic institution or student than that academic institution itself.
How does this impact sellers? Great question. Let’s get started answering this loaded question. There are 3,982 degree-granting institutions of higher learning as of 2020 according to US News. Nearly 4,000 institutions exist…. 4,000! That’s a lot.
This number is important to realize because Fiverr’s Terms and Conditions require sellers to become “academic police” for each and every one of those nearly 4,000 institutions of higher learning. Oh, but it gets so much worse.
Every single one of those institutions has by-laws and rules regarding code of academic conduct. Students attending are required to agree to that code of conduct upon enrolling in any one of those institutions. For example, rules against plagiarism is a typical code of conduct which may be found at many, if not most, of these institutions. It is beholden to the student to read, comprehend and understand this code of conduct for their specific institution upon enrollment.
However, for sellers on Fiverr, Fiverr’s Terms and Conditions effectively deputize sellers to become “academic police” for any or, indeed, all of these nearly 4,000 institutions of higher learning. This means that should a buyer show up at your seller doorstep, you must become responsible to make sure that buyer (who might be a student) isn’t violating a university’s academic code of conduct by buying something from you.
Not only that, Fiverr expects the seller to determine intent of every buyer… such as somehow magically deriving that a buyer is a student at one of those nearly 4,000 universities (or way less likely, even grade school), but also that the magically-derived “student” is buying the service with the INTENT of turning the resulting product in as their own work. Intent is something a seller cannot possibly determine or be expected to determine, let alone if the buyer is a student. Intent is difficult enough to determine and, more importantly, prove by defending and prosecuting attorneys in criminal court trials. How and, more importantly, WHY is a seller expected to determine intent for a site like Fiverr?
That’s like asking a gun dealer to be held responsible for intent of every gun sold. Thankfully, in the United States, there’s the PLCAA federal law that prevents this exact situation for gun dealers. Under the PLCAA, gun dealers cannot be held responsible for how a gun is used after it has been sold… which means, gun dealers cannot be held responsible for a buyer’s intent.
Fiverr’s Naïvety
Oh, it gets worse. Because there are so many institutions of higher learning not including grade schools, the seller would need to visit each and every one of those institutions of learning, THEN be required to read and understand each and every one of those rules of academic conduct for each of those ~4,000 institutions. That could take years. As I said, NAÏVE and insanely impractical.
Again, WHY is the seller responsible for this work? As a seller, I’m there to sell my services, not become police for for-profit higher education institutions.
Education Institutions
If schools have a problem with student conduct, that’s between the institution and the student. Fiverr, nor its sellers under it, has no role in this. That Fiverr has decided to take on the burden of becoming a police force for these mostly for-profit organizations is bewildering. Worse, that Fiverr expects the sellers to become that police is even more bewildering.
Work for Hire
In a discussion with a very naïve set of support representatives for Fiverr, a conversation ensued over this very same “academic police” issue. Essentially, the representative tried to make it seem like the seller is at fault by 1) not knowing the buyer is a student, 2) that a seller should know a student INTENDS to plagiarize and 3) that sellers are somehow responsible for that student’s plagiarism.
Let’s get one thing CRYSTAL clear. There’s no “plagiarism” under Work for Hire. The representative stated copyright infringement was also involved. There’s also no “copyright infringement” under Work for Hire. That’s not how Work for Hire copyrights work. If someone commissions and buys a work, such as writing a book, writing software code or any other software goods, as soon as the deal is closed, the delivered goods are considered as “Works Made For Hire”. The copyright office is very specific about this type of work and how copyrights apply to these works.
Works sold under “Works Made For Hire” see ALL copyrights turned over to the buyer as though the buyer created the work themselves. Meaning, as soon as the deal closes and those soft goods are delivered, the copyrights are fully, completely and legally owned 100% by the buyer. THIS is how “Works Made For Hire” copyright law works. From that link, here’s an excerpt that states that copyright law for a “work” (when made for hire) applies…
When a certain type of work is created as a result of an express written agreement between the creator and a party specially ordering or commissioning it
That’s exactly what Fiverr does… allow for commissioning a work using express written agreements. Thus, all works delivered from Fiverr are considered as “Work for Hire” and, thus, all copyrights are owned by the buyer upon delivery.
Academia, Works for Hire and Fiverr
Unfortunately, these concepts are like oil and water. They don’t want to mix. Academia wants students to create their own works. However, “Work for Hire” allows a student to buy a commissioned work, turn it in as their own work without legal issues and without plagiarism. Legally, under a “Work for Hire”, a student buyer owns the rights just as if they wrote it themselves. Therefore, no such plagiarism or copyright issues exist with “Work for Hire”. It might be an ethically poor choice on the student’s part and it might even deprive the student of much needed learning experience, but there’s nothing legally at fault here; not from the seller and not from the buyer.
Were the student to copy (not buy) a work from someone else and turn it in as their own, that’s plagiarism and copyright infringement. Keep in mind that plagiarism is not a ‘legal’ term. It’s an academic term typically bandied about when a student turns in a work they didn’t author themselves. However, commissioning someone and paying them for their efforts as a “Work for Hire” is not technically considered plagiarism and is most definitely not copyright infringement. While it might be ethically questionable for the student to take a “Work for Hire” route to complete an assignment, it doesn’t violate copyright laws and it isn’t plagiarism so long as the work was crafted by the seller as an “original work”.
Sellers Part II
With Fiverr, they’ve explicitly decided to place the burden of these “academically ethical” misdeeds onto the seller rather than onto the buyer / student. Let’s understand the problem here. Fiverr is not an academic institution. Fiverr, as far as I know, has no ties to academic institutions. Yet, Fiverr has crafted a Terms and Conditions policy that greatly benefits these for-profit academic institutions at the cost of requiring sellers to read and understand THOUSANDS of school policies to know if a potential buyer is violating any specific school policies.
WOW! Can you say, “overreaching?” I knew that you could. This situation is not only a ridiculous ask of sellers, it’s insanely complicated and time consuming and is highly unethical… all to sell a blog article, a work of fiction or a computer program on Fiverr?
None of this should be a seller responsibility. That’s Fiverr’s responsibility. A seller’s responsibility should end at selling their service. Violating school policies is the student’s responsibility to their school. The student agreed to their school’s conditions of attending that academic institution. The Fiverr seller plays no role in a student’s decisions. If a student intends or, indeed, violates a school’s enrollment conditions, that’s on the student to take the consequence. Fiverr should be completely hands-off of this process.
As I said, Fiverr’s management team is extremely naïve, gullible and unethical. That insane naïvety forces sellers to be incredibly overburdened as a long-arm-of-the-law for for-profit academic institutions combined with taking responsibility if a student violates a school’s academic policies. If an academic institution wants to task Fiverr sellers to become “academic police”, they can pay for that service like universities do for any other service.
Institutions of Higher Learning
Most higher education facilities (Universities and Colleges) are typically for-profit organizations. If they weren’t for-profit, they couldn’t keep the lights on, employ hundreds of instructors, janitors, staff AND buy desks, computers, buildings, land and so on. That Fiverr has taken the dubious and questionable step of writing into their Terms and Conditions a clause that favors these for-profit organizations is extremely questionable. Of course, one might ask, “Well, what about grade schools?”
Grade school is a whole separate bag and one where Fiverr shouldn’t actually ever see buyers for a number of reasons. The first and foremost reason is that grade school kids shouldn’t have credit cards to be able purchase items on Fiverr. The vast majority of grade school kids are at an age that prevents owning a credit card. A child might own a “learner” Visa debit card managed by their parents or perhaps a Visa gift card, but if Fiverr is accepting these payment cards without verifying age, Fiverr might be breaking other laws. For example, many grade school children are under the age of 13, which means that if Fiverr is allowing children under the age of 13 onto Fiverr’s platform, Fiverr is almost assuredly in violation of COPPA. Even minors under the age of 18 and who are still in grade school should be disallowed from making Fiverr purchases. In fact, only legal adults should be allowed to purchase services on Fiverr.
No, any application of “academic police” almost 100% both implies colleges and universities almost exclusively… which are most definitely for-profit organizations.
The above “academic police” situation would be tantamount to Fiverr adding a clause to its Terms and Conditions that holds sellers responsible for credit card fraud from buyers. Sellers aren’t “credit card police” any more than they should be “academic police”. Sellers have zero control over the payment system(s) that Fiverr employs and uses. Requiring such a condition for seller usage is not only backwater, it’s insanely stupid and definitely states exactly how inept the management team at Fiverr actually is.
Why would sellers be responsible for credit card fraud of a buyer when the seller has zero to do with that payment, that card or, indeed, the payment system? Sellers don’t get access to any of that card information. Thus, credit card management, just like academic management, is Fiverr’s responsibility.. and rightly it should be. It is on Fiverr to determine if a buyer is a student. It is on Fiverr to restrict and prevent purchases from students, not the seller.
If a seller is not a student at all and is not attending any academic institution, that seller holds exactly ZERO responsibility to any academic institution. Because Fiverr’s Terms and Conditions foists this agreement onto the seller is disingenuous, highly dubious, insanely stupid and, because of the time required to manage it, highly unethical. Everyone can understand the “credit card fraud” issue, so why is “academic fraud” any different here?
Low Wages
As a completely separate issue, but one that’s extremely relevant for sellers at Fiverr is how much money can a seller expect to make?
As a tech worker, the average wage to write code or build software, at least in the United States, is at typically between $30-70 per hour depending on experience, language, the type of code being written and so forth. That’s a lot for an hourly rate, but that’s the going rate in the United States.
Because far too many buyers on Fiverr are from Israel, Pakistan, India and other middle east countries where wages are very depressed, the expectation of costs of providing these services is extremely low. Meaning, instead of the normal going rate of ~$40 per hour, you’re expected to drop your fee down to $5 per project. Ironically, I think that’s why they named the site “Fiverr” because a “fiver” is all you’re going to get (less actually). I think you see the economic problem here. This brings me to my next point.
Commissions and Fees
Fiverr gets its money both coming and going. What that means is that for every “gig” sold (what they call a listing), Fiverr takes a 20% cut from both the buyer AND the seller separately. That’s a total of 40% cut for Fiverr from every single project sold. Let’s put a dollar value on that. For a $5 order, a seller will receive $4 with $1 going to Fiverr. A buyer will spend $6 to cover the $5 seller cost seeing $1 going to Fiverr. That’s a total of $2 that Fiverr made from that $5 sale.
This means for that $5, the seller doesn’t actually get $5, they get $4 (less after income taxes). You might spend 2 or more hours working on a project to receive less than $4? That’s way less than even minimum wage. So then, what’s the incentive to sell on Fiverr if nearly every buyer expects to spend $5 for almost any project? Yeah, that’s the real scam here.
Scam
Let’s get to the heart of the matter. Is Fiverr a scam? Clearly, Fiverr’s team is naïve and doesn’t understand the service they are offering. However, the overly expensive 40% commission that Fiverr takes combined with its overreaching Terms and Conditions, which is clearly designed to favor educational institutions over its sellers, and because the low price expectation from mostly middle east buyers leads the platform into extremely scam-ish territory.
Is it a scam? I don’t think the founders intended for it to be, but at this point it almost certainly is a scam. There are similar sites, like Upwork, that seemingly operate in a somewhat more legitimate way, yet those sites still choose to employ the overly high 40% commission system. However, because Upwork attracts more legitimate clientele over the “middle east crowd”, setting up listings on Upwork is more likely to lead to a better wage than when using Fiverr.
Bottom Line
Don’t go into Fiverr expecting to make a lot of money. Because of the mostly “middle east buyer crowd” who expects rock bottom prices that Fiverr seems to attract, because there’s few controls for sellers to protect themselves, because sellers must become “academic police” for for-profit educational institutions, because of the incredibly high 40% commission and because the actual income is so low, I’d class Fiverr as “mostly a scam”.
I strongly recommend avoiding this site unless Fiverr’s management team can get their act together and clean up all of these issues. Instead, if you’re looking for other “Work for Hire” type sites, try Upwork or CrowdSpring or, better, put your resume on LinkedIn and attempt to get legitimate actual employment with a real livable wage. However, if you enjoy frittering away literal hours of time for less than $5, then by all means head over to Fiverr.
CanDo: An Amiga Programming Language
At one point in time, I owned a Commodore Amiga. This was back when I was in college. I first owned an Amiga 500, then later an Amiga 3000. I loved spending my time learning new things about the Amiga and I was particularly interested in programming it. While in college, I came across a programming language by the name of CanDo. Let’s explore.
HyperCard
Around the time that CanDo came to exist on the Amiga, Apple had already introduced HyperCard on the Mac. It was a ‘card’ based programming language. What that means is that each screen (i.e., card) had a set of objects such has fields for entering data, placement of visual images or animations, buttons and whatever other things you could jam onto that card. Behind each element on the card, you could attach written programming functions() and conditionals (if-then-else, do…while, etc). For example, if you had an animation on the screen, you could add a play button. If you click the play button, a function would be called to run the animation just above the button. You could even add buttons like pause, slow motion, fast forward and so on.
CanDo was an interpreted object oriented language written by a small software company named Inovatronics out of Dallas. I want to say it was released around 1989. Don’t let the fact that it was an interpreted language fool you. CanDo was fast for an interpreted language (by comparison, I’d say it was proportionally faster than the first version of Java), even on the then 68000 CPU series. The CanDo creators took the HyperCard idea, expanded it and created their own version on the Amiga. While it supported very similar ideas to HyperCard, it certainly wasn’t identical. In fact, it was a whole lot more powerful than HyperCard ever dreamed of being. HyperCard was a small infant next to this product. My programmer friend and I would yet come to find exactly how powerful the CanDo language could be.
CanDo
Amiga owners only saw what INOVATronics wanted them to see in this product. A simplistic and easy to use user interface consisting of a ‘deck’ (i.e, deck of cards) concept where you could add buttons or fields or images or sounds or animation to one of the cards in that deck. They were trying to keep this product as easy to use as possible. It was, for all intents and purposes, a drag-and-drop programming language, but closely resembled HyperCard in functionality, not language syntax. For the most part, you didn’t need to write a stitch of code to make most things work. It was all just there. You pull a button over and a bunch of pre-programmed functions could be placed onto the button and attached to other objects already on the screen. As a language, it was about as simple as you could make it. I commend the INOVATronics guys on the user-friendly aspect of this system. This was, hands down, one of the easiest visual programming languages to learn on the Amiga. They nailed that part of this software on the head.
However, if you wanted to write complex code, you most certainly could do this as well. The underlying language was completely full featured and easy to write. The syntax checker was amazing and would help you fix just about any problem in your code. The language had a full set of typical conditional constructs including for loops, if…then…else, do…while, while…until and even do…while…until (very unusual to see this one). It was a fully stocked mostly free form programming language, not unlike C, but easier. If you’re interested in reading the manual for CanDo, it is now located at this end of this section below.
As an object oriented language, internal functions were literally attached to objects (usually screen elements). For example, a button. The button would then have a string of code or functions that drove its internal functionality. You could even dip into that element’s functions to get data out (from the outside). Like most OO languages, the object itself is opaque. You can’t see its functions names or use them directly, only that object that owns that code can. However, you could ask the object to use one of its function and return data back to you. Of course, you had to know that function existed. In fact, this would be the first time I would be introduced to the concept of object oriented programming in this way. There was no such thing as free floating code in this language. All code had to exist as an attachment to some kind of object. For example, it was directly attached to the deck itself, to one of the cards in the deck, to an element on one of the cards or to an action associated with that object (mouse, joystick button or movement, etc).
CanDo also supported RPC calls. This was incredibly important for communication between two separately running CanDo deck windows. If you had one deck window with player controls and another window that had a video you wanted to play, you could send a message from one window to another to perform an action in that window, like play, pause, etc. There were many reasons to need many windows open each communicating with each other.
The INOVATronics guys really took programming the Amiga to a whole new level… way beyond anything in HyperCard. It was so powerful, in fact, there was virtually nothing stock on the Amiga it couldn’t control. Unfortunately, it did have one downside. It didn’t have the ability to import system shared libraries on AmigaDOS. If you installed a new database engine on your Amiga with its own shared function library, there was no way to access those functions in CanDo by linking it in. This was probably CanDo’s single biggest flaw. It was not OS extensible. However, for what CanDo was designed to do and the amount of control that was built into it by default, it was an amazing product.
I’d also like to mention that TCP/IP was just coming into existence with modems on the Amiga. I don’t recall how much CanDo supported network sockets or network programming. It did support com port communication, but I can’t recall if it supported TCP/IP programming. I have no doubt that had INOVATronics stayed in business and CanDo progressed beyond its few short years in existence, TCP/IP support would have been added.
CanDo also supported Amiga Rexx (ARexx) to add additional functionality to CanDO which would offer additional features that CanDo didn’t support directly. Though, ARexx worked, it wasn’t as convenient as having a feature supported directly by CanDo.
Here are the CanDo manuals if you’re interested in checking out more about it:
- Original CanDo Manual
- Searchable CanDo Manual
- Original CanDo ProPak Manual
- Searchable CanDo ProPak Manual
Here’s a snippet from the CanDo main manual:
CanDo is a revolutionary, Amiga specific, interactive software authoring system. Its unique purpose is to let you create real Amiga software without any programming experience. CanDo is extremely friendly to you and your Amiga. Its elegant design lets you take advantage of the Amiga’s sophisticated operating system without any technical knowledge. CanDo makes it easy to use the things that other programs generate – pictures, sounds, animations, and text files. In a minimal amount of time, you can make programs that are specially suited to your needs. Equipped with CanDo, a paint program, a sound digitizer, and a little bit of imagination, you can produce standalone applications that rival commercial quality software. These applications may be given to friends or sold for profit without the need for licenses or fees.
As you can see from this snippet, INOVATronics thought of it as an ‘Authoring System’ not as a language. CanDo itself might have been, but the underlying language was most definitely a programming language.
CanDo Player
The way CanDo worked its creation process was that you would create your CanDo deck and program it in the deck creator. Once your deck was completed, you only needed the CanDo player to run your deck. The player ran with much less memory than the entire CanDo editor system. The player was also freely redistributable. However, you could run your decks from the CanDo editor if you preferred. The CanDo Player could also be appended to the deck to become a pseudo-executable that allowed you to distribute your executable software to other people. Also, anything you created in CanDo was fully redistributable without any strings to CanDo. You couldn’t distribute CanDo, but you could distribute anything you created in it.
The save files for decks were simple byte compiled packages. Instead of having to store humanly readable words and phrases, each language keyword had a corresponding byte code. This made storing decks much smaller than keeping all of the human readable code there. It also made it a lot more tricky to read this code if you opened the deck up in a text editor. It wasn’t totally secure, but it was better than having your code out there for all to see when you distributed a deck. You would actually have to own CanDo to decompile the code back into a humanly readable format… which was entirely possible.
The CanDo language was way too young to support more advanced code security features, like password encryption before executing the deck, even though PGP was a thing at that time. INOVATronics had more to worry about than securing your created deck’s code from prying eyes, though they did improve this as they upgraded versions. I also think the INOVATronics team was just a little naïve about how easily it would be to crack open CanDo, let alone user decks.
TurboEditor — The product that never was
A programmer friend who was working towards his CompSci masters owned an Amiga, and also owned CanDo. In fact, he introduced me to it. He had been poking around with CanDo and found that it supported three very interesting functions. It had the ability to decompile its own code into humanly readable format to allow modification, syntactically check the changes and recompile it, all while still running. Yes, you read that right. It supported on-the-fly code modification. Remember this, it’s important.
Enter TurboEditor. Because of this one simple little thing (not so little actually) that my friend found, we were able to decompile the entire CanDo program and figure out how it worked. Remember that important thing? Yes, that’s right, CanDo is actually written in itself and it could actually modify pieces that are currently executing. Let me clarify this just a little. One card could modify another card, then pull that card into focus. The actual card wasn’t currently executing, but the deck was. In fact, we came to find that CanDo was merely a facade. We also found that there was a very powerful object oriented, fully reentrant, self-modifying, programming language under that facade of a UI. In fact, this is how CanDo’s UI worked. Internally, it could take an element, decompile it, modify it and then recompile it right away and make it go live, immediately adding the updated functionality to a button or slider.
While CanDo could modify itself, it never did this. Instead, it utilized a parent-child relationship. It always created a child sandbox for user-created decks. This sandbox area is where the user built new CanDo Decks. Using this sandbox approach, this is how CanDo built and displayed a preview of your deck’s window. The sandbox would then be saved to a deck file and then executed as necessary. In fact, it would be one of these sandbox areas that we would use to build TurboEditor, in TurboEditor.
Anyway, together, we took this find one step further and created an alternative CanDo editor that we called TurboEditor, so named because you could get into it and edit your buttons and functions much, much faster than CanDo’s somewhat sluggish and clunky UI. In fact, we took a demo of our product to INOVATronics’s Dallas office and pitched the idea of this new editor to them. Let’s just say, that team was lukewarm and not very receptive to the idea initially. While they were somewhat impressed with our tenacity in unraveling CanDo to the core, they were also a bit dismayed and a little perturbed by it. Though, they warmed to the idea a little. Still, we pressed on hoping we could talk them into the idea of releasing TurboEditor as an alternative script editor… as an adjunct to CanDo.
Underlying Language
After meeting with and having several discussions with the INOVATronics team, we found that the underlying language actually has a different name. The underlying language name was AV1. Even then, everyone called it by ‘CanDo’ over that name. Suffice it to say that I was deeply disappointed that INOVATronics never released the underlying fully opaque, object oriented, reentrant, self-modifying on-the-fly AV1 language or its spec. If they had, it would have easily become the go-to deep programming language of choice for the Amiga. Most people at the time had been using C if they wanted to dive deep. However, INOVATronics had a product poised to take over for Amiga’s C in nearly every way (except for the shared library thing which could have been resolved).
I asked the product manager while at the INOVATronics headquarters about releasing the underlying language and he specifically said they had no plans to release it in that way. I always felt that was shortsighted. In hindsight for them, it probably was. If they had released it, it could have easily become CanDo Pro and they could sold it for twice or more the price. They just didn’t want to get into that business for some reason.
I also spoke with several other folks while I was at INOVATronics. One of them was the programmer who actually built much of CanDo (or, I should say, the underlying language). He told me that the key pieces of CanDo he built in assembly (the compiler portions) and the rest was built with just enough C to bootstrap the language into existence. The C was also needed to link in the necessary Amiga shared library functions to control audio, animation, graphics and so on. This new language was very clever and very useful for at least building CanDo itself.
It has been confirmed by Jim O’Flaherty, Jr. (formerly Technical Support for INOVATronics) via a comment that the underlying language name was, in fact, AV1. This AV portion meaning audio visual. This new, at the time, underlying object oriented Amiga programming language was an entirely newly built language and was designed specifically to control the Amiga computer.
Demise of INOVAtronics
After we got what seemed like a promising response from the INOVATronics team, we left their offices. We weren’t sure it would work out, but we kept hoping we would be able to bring TurboEditor to the market through INOVATronics.
Unfortunately, our hopes dwindled. As weeks turned into months waiting for the go ahead for TurboEditor, we decided it wasn’t going to happen. We did call them periodically to get updates, but nothing came of that. We eventually gave up, but not because we didn’t want to release TurboEditor, but because INOVATronics was apparently having troubles staying afloat. Apparently, their CanDo flagship product at the time wasn’t able to keep the lights on for the company. In fact, they were probably floundering when we visited them. I will also say their offices were a little bit of a dive. They weren’t in the best area of Dallas and in an older office building. The office was clean enough, but the office space just seemed a little bit well worn.
Within a year of meeting the INOVATronics guys, the entire company folded. No more CanDo. It was also a huge missed opportunity for me in more ways than one. I could have gone down to INOVATronics, at the time, and bought the rights to the software on a fire sale and resurrected it as TurboEditor (or the underlying language). Hindsight is 20/20.
We probably could have gone ahead and released TurboEditor after the demise of INOVATronics, but we had no way to support the CanDo product without having their code. We would have had to buy the rights to the software code for that.
So, there you have it. My quick history of CanDo on the Amiga.
If you were one of the programmers who happened to work on the CanDo project at INOVATronics, please leave a comment below with any information you may have. I’d like to expand this article with any information you’re willing to provide about the history of CanDo, this fascinating and lesser known Amiga programming language.
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