this post was submitted on 11 May 2026
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I don't know whether it's the reason, but a super obvious one would be to be able to measure how many people consume different shows etc.
If you read their articles or listen to their shows on third-party feeds, they have no way of knowing. Before you claim this is a good thing, some show you love might get cut because they don't know it's actually popular.
I just use their apps, so I'm not affected. I can see how people who prefer aggregate apps would dislike this, however.
Theres a place for trying ro understand consumer likes and dislikes. But a national broadcaster has a wider duty to deliver the information the nation needs to hear without fear or bias. Note, I am not saying the ABC today meets that duty.
Listening too much to the preferences of the listeners introduces a bias and a circular logic to deliver more of the popular shows with those listeners because otherwise why have the data analysis if you don't act on it. Same can be said of trying to attract non-listeners. Sometimes less is more.
People don't often want to be challenged, but its often what they need to hear to temper their own beliefs of their correctness. Thats a key public service that is necessarily affected by reacting your audience/non-audience too well. Its like fact-checking, no one wants it, but it works.
Edits: spelling
ABC radio also often contains way more enriching stuff than news. Longform discussion with experts, interviews and dicussions with random citizens affected by something, curated musical showcases (a good blend of classics and modern stuff like videogame music) that aim to teach audiences about a genre and promote Australian performers.
It's legit some of the best stuff out there for entertainment that grows you and connects you to the broader political project that is Australia.
Fucking stupid to wall it up and make it harder to listen to than corporate slop.
However was this solved before the ability to surveil everyone all the time? Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
You know, we don't actually know what roads are efficient. Let's gps tag every car. Actually we don't know at what hours of the day people need water, we could optimise this if we put a camera in everyone's kitchen sink.
I swear neolibs are more in favour of restrictive surveillance than the most ardent ML.
edit: god fucking dammit everything about your comment pisses me off. You don't "consume" a radio program, nothing is destroyed by you listenining to it. You listen, there's a fucking non business-idoit product-brain word for participating in radio programming as as an audience and it's called listening. L-I-S-T-E-N-I-N-G can you spell it you weirdo?
Do you think it's bad for a generator of content to determine if said content is being viewed / listened (or consume)?
Such a stupid false dichotomy. Can you seriously not think of any solutions other than indiscriminate, nonconsentual surveillance?
Gee whiz you seem empassioned by this. Ok, so as a taxpayer and a funder of a public service, I'd like elements of the service to be held accountable by key performance indicators. Obviously a fairly clear indicator would usually be reach/ viewership. Do you have any alternatives ? I'm not sure what pod people are?
Here are some:
Surveys, very old technology, worked for 100 years. Know how statistics work? You can survey x from X and generalise any x' from X within known confidence intervals.
Voluntary tracking: Ask users if they would be ok making an account. Consent, it's good in more situations than the bedroom
Track IPs. You own the server that is issuing the streams, IPs can be broadly associated with areas. Pretty good stats. Some people forward streams or use VPNs? statistical noise who cares.
btw it would have been faster to look up pod people than write about your ignorance.