by ChrisArchitect on 1/13/24, 3:06 AM
by Me1000 on 1/13/24, 12:24 AM
I tried using Artifact but I found the way they gamified the app to encourage users to come back and click on articles to be very unhealthy. News can often be stressful, it's good to take breaks. It's also healthy to sometimes reduce your news intake to things that specifically affect your life. These things are basically the opposite of how Artifact was designed to be used.
by tjfontaine on 1/13/24, 12:56 AM
I enjoyed using this app and will be sad to see my current 217 day streak end.
While it's far from the only app that offered a reader mode, its implementation handled some of the more esoteric news sources (with disruptive layouts) better than the others I've tried. But the feature I will miss the most is title rewriting ("mark as clickbait") which I now hope to see as a feature on all my "reader" class apps (news, email, etc).
Great work, and kudos to the team.
by faizshah on 1/13/24, 12:15 AM
I’ve been thinking about this for a while, why do these news apps like this one or Prismatic in 2014 not work in the english speaking market but in the Chinese market Toutiao was a massive success for bytedance? What is the difference that makes it so hard for news apps to work in the English market?
by Jonanin on 1/13/24, 12:20 AM
Props to the founders for trying, but news is a bad business that is already very crowded, so I'm not super surprised.
by emilioGrimaldii on 1/16/24, 6:40 PM
Artifact had potential, but it didn't quite meet my expectations due to an overload of random news articles. I believe the future of news aggregators lies in their ability to synthesize content. Have you checked Debriefs AI ?(
https://debriefs.ai). They allow users to curate their favorite newsletters and sources into unique workspaces. The standout feature for me is its capability to create key insights with AI, which can be tailored to the frequency of my choosing. If you're in search of a customized news experience, Debriefs AI is a service I highly recommend.
by testfrequency on 1/13/24, 1:08 AM
This bums me out. Artifact was actually enjoyable to use, and the social commenting on news often had very sane and normal commentary to it.
Anyone know any good alternatives? I tried Ground News at launch and found it far too chaotic though I like the novelty of the unbiased model
by Alifatisk on 1/13/24, 11:41 AM
That's really sad, the enjoyed opening the app sometimes.
I wish Artifact didn't have the infinite scroll of news. I would have preferred just seeing the latest news and then stop, not allow me to see news from 2 months ago.
Some categories were also lacking and consisted of mostly low-effort articles. I thought the Ai would have gotten rid of those based on my effort of blocking them, or marking them as not interesting, but the Ai was still pushing them into my view.
Adding streaks was a misstake in my opinion, as someone else mentioned, Artifact sometimes went against their purpose of the app.
Otherwise, I thought the app had a lot of potential. Had they only integrated more local news, I would have used it a lot more!
by alpuguray on 1/16/24, 6:36 PM
People want to choose their sources and follow niche topics that are relevant to them. Until recently, none of the apps on the market could facilitate this. However, I discovered Debriefs AI (
https://debriefs.ai), which allows you to create workspaces that track your newsletters and sources. It then builds key insights at the frequency you prefer. I highly recommend it.
by loceng on 1/13/24, 1:34 AM
It was ad-revenue supported I presume?
by senkora on 1/13/24, 1:02 AM
I tried it and generally liked it. It learned to mostly send me articles about food and new restaurants, which made me happy. Unfortunately, I forgot about it and stopped checking it months ago, so I suppose that I was part of the problem. Sad to see it go.
by gardenhedge on 1/13/24, 12:25 AM
I hadn't heard of this app. Seems like they're shutting down very quickly. No pivot or anything. Strange.
by mrkramer on 1/13/24, 11:21 AM
I can't resist and say that Kevin Systrom had more luck than skill in his success with Instagram. Yes he is smart and yes he is Stanford graduate but c'mon he said that he didn't know what AWS is at the time when he started Instagram....that's just unbelievable tbh.
by pwizzler on 1/13/24, 3:46 AM
This became my primary newsreader outside NYT. I’ll be sad to see it go.
by goopthink on 1/13/24, 5:57 AM
I tried it a few months ago and most of the articles it linked me to or suggested were paywalled, each with their own subscriptions. In Apple News, you pay one subscription and get all of them unlocked. It was a no-brainer which reader to use.