Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by umeshunni | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

umeshunni

It focuses on tech stories from other countries besides the USA (but written from a distinctly US point of view).

Top stories on the front page right now:

* Fighting brain drain and creeping authoritarianism in Russia’s techno-utopian village

* A defamation lawsuit in Singapore sets a dangerous precedent

* Peru’s surprise presidential front runner has fewer than 8,000 Twitter followers

* The mysterious user editing a global open-source map in China’s favor

No thanks - I'll stick to reading international media.

View on HN

I don't understand the dismissive attitude. It's very much an all or nothing argument that completely ignores the middle ground.

I personally think this is a fantastic gateway. I'd love to have a better global perspective, but I simply don't have the resources (or time) to build a deeply informed opinion. This type of media gives me access to foreign tech within easy reach. Honestly, it gives me exposure to topics that I wouldn't even know exists. If it's a topic that piques my interest, I can certainly find alternative coverage (hopefully with less bias).

I recall reading this article about Bangladesh[1] from the site. Even for someone who know basically nothing about Bangladesh, it wasn't hard to notice major inconsistencies in their narrative; my analysis at the time[2]. It seems they took something fairly ordinary and tried hard to spin it into a "look how different these people are" (different in a bad way, for the most part, from my impressions) story to sell to Americans. Needless to say I take what they write with a big grain of salt.

[1] https://restofworld.org/2020/bangladesh-economy-runs-on-face...

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23915629

>> (but written from a distinctly US point of view)

Yes and no.

The US audience is important but its not the only audience. If you look at the authors of those articles you will see that most of the writers are based outside of the US and (as much as in possible) in the areas/countries being reported on.

The goal is to increase that metric as much as possible.

* Fighting brain drain and creeping authoritarianism in Russia’s techno-utopian village

- By Leonid Ragozin who is based in Latvia (as far as I know)

* A defamation lawsuit in Singapore sets a dangerous precedent

- By Kirsten Han, a journalist based in Singapore.

* Peru’s surprise presidential front runner has fewer than 8,000 Twitter followers

- By Jimena Ledgard, based in Lima, Peru

* The mysterious user editing a global open-source map in China’s favor

- By Vittoria Elliott, based in USA, and Nilesh Christopher in Bangalore, India.

Full-disclosure: I work there. Writing from personal knowledge.

İ am glad she has no apparent bias at all

Reply on news.ycombinator.com