This week on 4chan I learned of the volcano eruption and the Evergrande bankruptcy trouble before I found any mainstream coverage of either one. This is not an abnormal occurrence with news stories, with similar patterns occurring even for Covid in Dec 2019.

Same goes for ZeroHedge, which is maybe one rung above 4chan in the information laundry cycle. Most stories like this seem to progress clearly through a spectrum of speed vs. noise. They emerge in high-speed, high-noise sources like 4chan, then tumble toward low-speed, low-noise sources. There are many sequences, but one common progression is 4chan > ZeroHedge > Federalist > Fox > CNN.

Sometimes it feels like the only way to understand the truth of a story is to observe this cycle from end to end. But it’s exhausting, and requires too much time.

I wonder if anyone is working on a solution to this. I would love a news app where users curate the news into “stories” with automated scrapers finding every related article and comments section. I want to view the story and trace it back to its origin without needing to observe it in real time. Give me a timeline, with automatically archived pages and screenshots.