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Comment by papermill | Hacker News Reader

Americans agree politics is divisive. Americans agree news is divisive. Americans agree sports is divisive. But we all still consume it.

I don't get the point of the article. People are divisive. Water is wet and anything having to do with people is divisive.

How many of these "social media bad" articles are we really going to get from the news industry? It's getting to be annoying, boring and exhausting. If social media is so bad, why is the WSJ and the rest of the media trying to force their way onto social media platforms? If these journalists are right and social media is so bad, why are journalists so prominent on twitter and much of social media?

If you want divisive, go check out the WSJ and NYTimes comment sections. Yet a lot of people consume products from WSJ and NYTimes.

What's the answer? No media altogether or force people to think alike?

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But in your comment, you just question everything without giving degree to which things are affected.

I believe these statement give better feeling about the proportionality of each media source:

Yes journalists are sometimes wrong, but most of the time they do their best to research a subject.

Don't go to comment section unless you want to loose your faith in humanity, there are some insights there sometimes but most of the time comment section is just full of angry people. (The Atlantic removed comment section altogether).

Social media (Facebook, twitter and the like) thrive on divisiveness, sensationalism and appealing to gut instinct rather then exploring any kind of intellectual idea. That is what platforms are made for, with the system of how things get promoted, shared and rewarded -- counting engagement instead of value to individuals and society.

Guess where all the advertising dollars go in this case, papers are loosing money because any kind of attempt to examine ideas is a lot less interesting for the advertisers because all they want pay money for is engagement.

I think of how many people read one of Ta-Nehisi Coates' exquisitely researched, half-hour-long read articles at the Atlantic, vs how many people click on a video of a cat falling off a dresser or something. Sigh.

==How many of these "social media bad" articles are we really going to get from the news industry?==

How many dieting articles are written by the news industry?

==If these journalists are right and social media is so bad, why are journalists so prominent on twitter and much of social media?==

Because they have to be to make money, that doesn't help answer the question of whether or not they are bad themselves. There is a difference between a corporation (profit-seeking entity) and an individual (happiness-seeking entity). It makes sense that they may have different views on what is good/bad.

If you look at journalists’ social media accounts you’ll see that it’s not about making money but it is about in-group signaling and being extremely obnoxious. They tend to tweet a lot and engage in the worst behavior. Blue check mark Twitter is the most toxic Twitter.

I view them as individuals who are falling prey to the same negative effects that social media has on the broader population.

They are much worse than the general population though. I don’t know if that’s because they are somewhat able to leverage their employers to build very large followings, thus have amplified experiences or if journalism attracts attention seekers. Probably a bit of both.

A common refrain is that they rant against technology a lot. Which is ironic considering where they are doing it.

>No media altogether or force people to think alike?

I'd say media already tries (and succeeds for a lot of things) to make people think alike

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