Negativity drives online news consumption
nature.com
nature.com
In the age of infinite content, headlines have become a sort of drama arms race. But the basic dynamic of what works and what doesn't for drawing in readers hasn't changed.
Online news (as well as cable news) in particular has taken to farming any kinds of changes to society as moral decay. Airing or printing only outrage is a business model unto its own. See: Huffpost, Breitbart for examples.
Are they the things that matter to the people who have the perception, though?
I don't think it's all about the news.
"... the United States is an outlier among rich Western democracies, with a stagnation in happiness and higher rates of homicide, incarceration, abortion, sexually transmitted disease, child mortality, obesity, educational mediocrity and premature death.... "
Many of these issues are ones people are going to be aware of, and that is going to impact, them on a day to day basis. And that's going to inform their decisions much more than whatever the news is saying. And that was written back in 2018 which absolutely feels like the "good ole days" compared to now a days!
[1] - https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/inspired-life/wp/2018/02...
I think the way the news is reported says more about us than it does about the organizations that do the reporting. If we didn't want all the negativity, we would reject it, and they'd stop reporting it. But that doesn't happen. So, essentially, we want all the negativity - yes, it's how we're wired. We just don't want to accept it.
Like OOP said, that was a surface level thought. Finding evidence in evolutionary psychology seems like a big leap from that.
News of bad event could directly impinge survival. News of a good thing happening to someone far away does not really improve comfort and stability.
The point was not about providing a good counter-example. I wanted to show that when one hand-waves away a behavoiur to an abstract selection criteria, one can easily come up with criteria that contradicts that notion.
I realized that certain people indoctrinate their children, and this is the correct usage of the word, with a negative outlook on life. They ignore the altruistic nature of humanity for a distance based trust system. Assuming the son takes this message to heart he'll likely experience more problems because of his mistrust and when he examines his situation in life confirmation bias will prevent any self reflection. I don't understand why you reduce us to "scared and vigilant" and I wonder if that is a self fulfilling state.
But more seriously, the reason people indoctrinate isn't because they want them to be negative, but to realize that being pessimistic is actually going to be a more reliable way to have a plan for life when no one is able to help.
For example, if your car breaks down and your cell phone battery is around 30%- you have time to make a few phone calls, but instead of wondering if your friend can pick you up (assuming he has a cheap pickup truck that can tow), you rationalize- he might be sleeping, working, unwilling to answer the phone. You have three phone calls to make, so you decide you'll compare the rates of the two nearest towing companies.
Which do you call? You have money and time to spend, but you don't want to be stranded for a very long time, even assuming you were able to pull your car over to the side of the curb. Being pessimistic is just being prepared, and similarly, you want to try to save for a rainy day.
I take it you are a conservative. This is a perennial city people (liberal) versus rural folk (conservative) discussion that will never have a resolution.
Liberals generally don’t believe in the idea that "no one is able to help" because they live in larger urban populations that see the government as beneficial.
Conservatives tended to live in more rural areas where there weren’t as many people to help them, and they couldn’t depend on the government.
There are too many people in a city to form relationships with everyone, you don't know 99.9% of the people you see in daily life because there are so many moving around. On the other hand in a small village, most times you see another person it's a repeated interaction and you have met that person before.
So the rural conservative view and values on social interaction is more based on repeated interactions with people you already know, whereas the urban liberal has values and prefers systems that work well with anonymous people; the government needs to step in to help people in need (because their neighbours won't).
Suburbs, however, are dystopian soul destroying hellscapes. Simultaneously parasites feeding off of the prosperous urban areas while desecrating previously productive lands.
Urban and rural peoples are natural allies, kept apart by pro suburbanite propaganda. The American Dream™ was presented as McMansions, endless pavement, strip malls, and 2 SUVs in every garage.
https://lit.newcity.com/2010/12/20/nonfiction-review-please-...
I don’t disagree with anything here, except there is a correlation between the amount of trust liberals and conservatives give to people in their community, and one user up above directly addressed how small towns generate trust between people they personally know. The only thing I would disagree with here is the notion that some people believe there is a helping hand to be had; I think this is more of a political myth. What I was originally getting at is that liberals believe government can and does help people, while conservatives, at least in the US, promote the idea that government should be hands off.
I also think the GOP relies more on the patronage system now,
What I find interesting is that there is a study of this viewpoint, and it's called Primals: https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/Penn-Primals-Project-resear...
I think that best captures the divide, more so than specific political issues, although that does overlap alot- for example, the perception of crime and immigration, while not correlated, get grouped as a platform issue on the right, whereas the Democratic platform does not consider those issues in the same light.
There is another anthropological term for fear, that I can't remember but read a few days ago- I think it was a Dutch anthropologist who coined a term in the 70s and also developed a computer architecture.
Strange thing to say in a hospital bed? Also, if the doctors know you are dying of Covid you can hardly talk right? Seems fishy.
It's strange until you get the hospital bill in the mail.
Your investigation didn't involve a simple Google search?
In an ideal world, news outlets aren't pushing news that is shocking for the sake of being shocking (and therefore, increasing viewership/readership), but pushing news that is actually relevant to a good percentage of their viewers.
Sure, report things like severe weather forecasts, boil water advisories, etc.
But I don't need to know about every crime, or every scandal in Hollywood, etc. -- and this is most of the negative information that's covered. Not the things that are genuinely relevant to most of us.
I saw some headline about how students at some school, Berkeley I believe, had joined arms and surrounded the front entrance to the school, and would only allow non-white students to go through, forcing white students to go around and enter the back way, or something to that effect. I felt the all-too-familiar-at-that-point boiling rage enter my mind—this was an outrage! a clumsy attempt at making a political statement about racism, enacted through an act of mass racism. did these idiots not understand that they're not making things better for anyone, that their actions served only to divide rather than unite?! how could they not see this, it was so obvious?!? I could feel my blood start to boil: rrrrRRRRRAAAAUUUUUGHH—
suddenly, I had this moment of clarity out of nowhere, as though from God Himself: I was fully aware, somewhere in the back of my mind, that the whole point of this stunt was to cause outrage locally, and the whole point of the article about it was to spread the outrage globally, even though the article reporting on the event was politically opposed to the actions the students had taken. yet, in the end, their goal was the same: to cause outrage!
woah. "both sides" here want to cause me to be outraged, and here my dumb ass was, just letting it happen. why should I oblige either party? was I really so simple and manipulable that just seeing some words and photos on a screen about something dumb and wholly irrelevant to my own personal daily life could work me up this much? what the hell was wrong with me? why did I let myself fall for this bullshit?
since that day, I have never once felt that familiar blood-boiling rage as the result of reading a headline or news article again. I can't really explain it but something just clicked in my head that day, giving me insight into just how emotionally manipulative pretty much all "news" so obviously is, and how, once I was made consciously aware of this phenomenon, it was really on me to consent to this blatant emotional manipulation—which, I then realized, I had totally been doing for years at that point!
I had nearly forgotten about this having ever happened until recently a very close friend saw a news article about something that had happened over a decade ago, politically framed such that it was relevant to contemporary politics, and it significantly emotionally affected him in a way that reminded me all too much about my past self. I talked him through this story and showed him how much better off I was today now that I choose to refuse to let news headlines and even stories massively emotionally affect me. it took awhile to talk him down from his irrationally outraged state but in the end he calmed down, heard what I had to say, and thanked me profusely for the perspective I gave him, as, much like the story that outraged me years ago, this too had caught him completely off-guard such that before he knew it he was an emotional mess, all because of something he read on the Internet, about something that had happened over a decade prior.
Then recognized same pattern in every TV ad afterwards, almost all target some sort of insecurity or feeling of lack.
catching oneself in that circular road and taking another turn off that wheel, that aha!, that enlightening moment is what some people invest heavily into, time, energy even money.
and you have it just like so, ten years ago, from that news article on racists blaming anti-racists for a racist anti-racism gig...
what a gift :-)
and thank you for sharing!
Yet all I ever see in the media are ridiculous parodies of the other side. I've basically stopped almost all politics reading at this point. It's no better than gossip columns, and big brother level entertainment, it's just packaged for people who think they're more intelligent than those who watch big brother.
> Yet I know most people on the other side are actually good people, with good intentions, we just disagree on a few points.
I think this is the attitude most people have if they stop consuming so much news. And I think it dissolves a huge amount of animosity we see between different groups in western society atm.
I have a feeling a lot of people across the political spectrum feel the same. Some day one of the parties is going to find not pandering to the emotional appeals of their brand of extremists is actually a huge political gain. I hope for that day, but not much.
It's telling that I literally can't tell which side you're referring to, as both sides seem dominated by raving lunatics obsessed with offensive garbage. I guess amplifying that garbage is exactly what sells, which is why reporting of each side focuses on that.
Welcome to the equanimity of Stoicism.
This has been a good opening for niche creators on Youtube and such -- i.e., there are plenty of people out there interested in vegan, oil-free recipes, and that audience can go to a specialist on Youtube and the creator can be successful covering only that one niche. But in aggregate it's not going to outperform food that provides more dopamine, so the major food publications have to deprioritize it.
Use a high fat ground beef and bread crumbs that'll soak up that fat, and I'm sure many would consider that unhealthy.
Use lean meat and something else as filler (oatmeal is common when trying to fill out meat) and it would be less unhealthy, but far more prone to error, resulting in perhaps a tasteless brick.
Never read on meatloaf, but I'm sure a publication would go the "easier but fattier" route.
It's not a mindset, any more than gravity is a mindset.
A moderate amount, especially lean, is considered a net health positive by the vast majority of the relevant professionals.
> A moderate amount, especially lean, is considered a net health positive by the vast majority of the relevant professionals.
I don't think that's true, but how do you define "net health positive". My understanding is that you are better off without it, but a little won't kill you.
That is, there is a saddlepoint for how much negativity viewers desire.
While I don't personally know what the threshold for psychological damage from exposure to this kind of media is, I would guess it's lower than the average exposure level is now.
32 links to stories above the fold for my browser
3 are emotionally neutral or positive
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6 links to stories above the fold
0 are emotionally neutral or positive
The only thing next is to just be the violence network
It's basically something that scratches the itch of human curiosity, but with manipulative and lowest common denominator garbage.
We'd all be better off if we scratched that curiosity itch by reading about things we're interested in, rather than current events.
Most daily-or-faster reporting is so shallow that consuming the information may, at times, be a net-negative to your understanding of whatever issue they're reporting about.
I do local advocacy for transit and civic planning related purposes in a US city. A lot of the "work" is really boring, just going to long public meetings and listening to SMEs drone about very specific issues. But that's where the sausage gets made. Our local transportation department is very receptive to the public's urban concerns and is doing a lot of great work. But they're blocked right now. Not just because their funding is uncertain or due to cranky old neighbors, but mostly because they have staff shortages as Baby Boomers retire. There's nothing we activists can do about this, we can't campaign for a measure or bill that puts butts into seats.
If you go to Youtube or online North American urbanist forums though, folks aren't interested in these local issues at all. A lot of it is raving and ranting about how the US puts cars first and hates its people. This is fun to get emotional about (and believe me I've had enough close run-ins with cars as a pedestrian or cyclist to feel the rage) but doesn't actually materially affect our local urban conditions. But it's a lot less fun to talk about budget appropriation and staffing politics and much more fun to get angry at the GM Streetcar Conspiracy, so nobody does.
I'm not saying these topics aren't important; if you're new to the issue it's important to understand why North American built environments are the way they are. But what's more important is working to change the reality around you, not getting wrapped up in online debates.
Similarly, working on campaigns reveals that most political commentary isn't even wrong, so not even worth debating.
PS-
> about how the US puts cars first
And the flip side: How anything less than full throated praise for and life long devotion to cars, such as asking for safety improvements like sidewalks and bike paths, is part of a grand anti car conspiracy. Sure. There's 1.4b cars in the world, and growing. And me peddling to work 3 days a week is an existential threat to the world order.
News generally doesn't "educate" (eg add knowledge to your views that then updates them), it confirms biases.
* NY Times: Attacked from all sides by those in power, and for a good reason.
* Washington Post: Smaller, and if I had to say, maybe not quite up to the NY Times
* Financial Times: Expensive, but on par IMHO with the other two.
* The Guardian can be excellent, but signal-to-noise (consequential-to-not) ratio isn't as strong as the others, IMHO.
* The Economist: Free-market ideologues, but if you have to read one thing, they are most efficient. Not really journalism (they don't go out and dig up information, nor report their factual basis transparently with quotes, etc.; but short, efficient, sophisticated, very wide-ranging analysital pieces.
* Poltico: I'm not sure what I think of them; I don't trust their ownership entirely [0], but they are seriously competing with the others, at least in national/international political news.
The Wall Street Journal seems serious, but it's run by Rupert Murdoch. If people trusted the WSJ before, I don't know how they do now after the Dominion case revealed Murdoch openly manipulating reporting to favor Trump and others.
----
Another good options is curated news summaries. I'd look up Just Security's, for example. Politico also has some newsletters like NatSec Daily. Memeorandum can be great, if you skip over the less important stories.
[0] Look up the NY Times reporting on Axel Springer's owner (Axel Springer bought Politico recently).
> With few exceptions, positive stories
and then you wrote
> a whole section for feel-good features
"Positive news" is more or less orthogonal to "feel-good features". When I moved to my current job, I had the option of watching Kansas City news or Topeka news. The KC news stations took the route you're suggesting. Everything was negative and intended to shock/alarm ("Joe Smith was murdered and then the police were involved in a car chase to catch the murderer. When they shot out his tires, he took his own life.") The Topeka stations did mostly positive news, with some negative mixed in. As any sane person would do, it didn't take long for me to go with only the Topeka news. It was nice to know what was going on in the area, to see a review of a local restaurant, or to hear about the debate on a change in the sales tax. I don't watch the news to see someone's good luck.
Don't get me wrong, I think efforts like Little Timmy's are great and in the scope of their lives is probably significant. It doesn't however hit the level of magnitude/significance and scope of their negative counter parts. It's only in local news sources that I tend to see a better balance of things that truly effect, are relevant to me, and aren't full of doom and gloom.
--The Rabbi in Fiddler on the Roof
But if your local high school football team wins a state title? You'll sell that paper out. Local refinery explodes? Likewise.
But large notable news probably still drives clicks, yeah? The moon landing was the most watched program in history, after all.
This isn't an argument against the free press or anything. As bad as bias and fearmongering in news is, adding government oversight would make it way worse. It's just a thought experiment.
To elaborate, if news is inherently skewed towards negativity (and I'm just taking that at face value), then maybe it shouldn't be revered as much as it is (by my estimation). I think people tend to think that news is sacred - more is better and it should face no challenges to its existence. But I also think we find ourselves in a predicament that we don't associate with times where news consisted of a daily paper and perhaps the radio. I'm not sure those times were any less prone to bias an negativity. The bigger difference is there was just a lot less news. Maybe the world would be better off with less news.
I'm not really sure what sort of attitude change or direction this would dictate. Like I said, it would be terrible for the government to limit news, and this negativity exists because there is strong demand for it. I guess I think people just shouldn't watch the news much, with some exception. I mean if you look at cable for example, it's virtually all garbage.
I suspect discussing knowledge of the news is some kind of social signaling.
What I'm getting at is that the premise that news is mostly negative seems to pretty clearly dictate that we would be better off without most news. Yet this seems to contradict a pretty wildly held belief that getting rid of news is troubling.
Ie, you will be looked down on in some circles if you are not aware of what is going on. Knowing what someone else doesn't know is a way of being better than them. Or signalling that you are better than them.
It's not usually as overt as this, but it's there.
A few examples; the Titanic was never called unsinkable until after it sank, no one committed suicide on Black Friday as a result of the stock market crash, and there was no public panic caused by the original War of the Worlds radio broadcast. All of these things were reported by the media at the time.
Think of the stories you see day to day and imagine in 100 years if these are the go-to source for information about our time how skewed a picture you would have of how things actually were.
These examples are more "sensational" than negative, but it is essentially the same idea.
And setting the record straight, where "straight" is whatever the powers-that-be want.
We even have an age old saying for this: History is written by the victors.
Historical records, and by extension journalism, have never been concerned about recording the facts. They have always been concerned only about defining the narratives and truths for the powers of the time.
Why should I believe you, a random person on the Internet?
I think you’re close. There was a lot less repetition of news. Now the need to fill endless hours with content means stories are repeated ad nauseam. Keep in mind that repetition is known and used as a torture technique. “Repetition is an important neural linguistic programming interrogation tactic to influence the target mind” [0].
[0] https://neuralguantanamo.com/no-touch-torture-techniques/
It works for ML too. If Tesla had a set of training data that was inversed, ie the vast majority of cars were involved in a crash, it would have a fully working level 5 autonomous autopilot 2 years ago.
Its much more efficient to have the knowledge of statistically improbable but bad actions to avoid, rather to have a set of good actions where you don't know where the boundaries are.
Lets say that you had to walk through a minefield with a set number of mines. You could pay me $10 for a piece of information. I can either tell you a spot with a mine, or a spot without one. How do you spend your money?
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1. To let you know about local or world events that could affect you and those close to you.
2. To let you know about world events that affect others far away, in order to judge the effectiveness of political decisions and the necessity of future political decisions.
3. As a form of entertainment derived from the ongoing story of world history (or celebrity gossip, or whatever else).
---
#1 is the reason that news feels important enough that tuning it out completely feels irresponsible, but it's a very small component of most news.
#2 is perhaps necessary for democracy to work, but it's so easy to manipulate, and the incentive to manipulate it is so high, that it's questionable whether this type of news has ever existed without being more manipulation than fact---and this has been true since long before the internet.
#3 is the real reason most people (myself included) read news, even when they convince themselves it's #1 or #2. And it becomes unhealthy because, as long as you're convinced you need to care deeply about what you're reading because it's actually #1 or #2, it will inspire constant anxiety.
I would be interested to see a type of (perhaps government-funded) news service whose sole purpose is to publish only news that fits into category #1: if it is not reasonably likely to affect the average reader in an actionable way in the next 6 months, then it can't be published in this outlet.
For a long time, Al Jazeera was great on anything that didn't directly impact Qatari domestic politics.
PBS is pretty fantastic overall and serves a lot of niches that aren't served by commercialized media and really shouldn't be.
Like yes if you set out to make a state-sponsored propaganda agency then that's what you get (see: Voice of America, etc), but state sponsorship of media doesn't inherently corrupt. If anything it's the opposite and really the accusations of bias end up being a way to try and control coverage that you find inconvenient and force faux-centrism (see: NPR).
Corporate vs. public ownership matters a lot less than institutional standards and the org's cultural commitment to a rigorous journalistic mission. BBC has a relatively strong commitment; NPR (my favorite whipping boy for bad journalism packaged as Thinky Stuff) does not.
Corporate sponsorships are, at an average 39% during the same period, the largest source of funding. Contributions (what we'd call donations) are 12%.
Put another way: Local donors may (or may not -- I don't know) form the backbone of funding individual stations. But corporate sponsorships fund most of the content that appears on most of the stations, and also funds its distribution.
Since you're an expert:
How do you find and consume news?
If you were made King/BDFL, how would you "fix" investigative journalism? A la the documentary "Fit to Print".
* Reading rather than watching/listening.
* Going out of my way to consume content from authors/publications whose worldview I disagree with. Ditto for non-U.S. sources.
* Filter based on seriousness rather than passion. The whole information ecosystem is full of people and institutions ready to be passionate about almost any topic; the number willing to be serious is a lot smaller. This, more than any other filter, will improve your news-consuming experience.
* Read what the journalists are reading to get their story ideas. That means niche-y Substacks, newsletters and industry websites.
Investigative journalism: There are some nonprofits doing an very good job, like ProPublica. But too often, those newsrooms are political/cultural monocultures. To use the ProPublica example, you're much, much more likely to see stories about evil billionaires and how government should have done something(tm), than investigations about how, say, government is holding people back.
Some of this stems from hiring trends in journalism, which have skewed more and more to hiring coastal, degree-holding (relative) elites compared to the more blue-collar newsrooms of the past. Hire for monoculture, get monoculture results.
But the other part is funding diversity -- left-leaning donors have embraced nonprofit journalism in a way right-leaning donors have not.
When the right gives to journalistic efforts it tends to take the form of local investigation (and there are some GREAT reporters doing local-market work with that model), open-the-books efforts aimed at government transparency or, these days, own-the-libs clickbait. This reflects the growing delta between how much the right and left trust the press in the U.S.
But I am very comfortable critiquing the consistently low quality of NPR journalism.
That doesn't mean that they're in the same league with the worst of cable news. However, some of the dynamics are similar:
* Journalists interviewing other journalists;
* Stories with no balance from opposing-view sources; and
* Facts regularly asserted by the journalist rather than a credible source.
Now I won't say PBS or NPR are above criticism -- and as the kids say, "there's a lot to unpack here", but let's be honest, is NPR's journalism really low-quality? Or is it more likely you have a bit of grievance with NPR because you feel they do not favor your own particular political bias? Since we are internet strangers and have little context to go on, I can only assume the latter is the most likely.
If I was drinking coffee my monitor and keyboard and mouse and desk would be ruined right now.
I hope it's a joke. No one could say this with a straight face
I suggest the opposite. I'd like a proof that there is no government involvement.
Believe it or not, I think the closest to this is ideal is 4chan /pol/. It's not backed by any major corporation (unlike HN which is backed by Y Combinator), it's not partly owned by Tencent/China (unlike Reddit), and so on. There's no algorithm, there's no karma, there's no blue badge, it barely scrapes by using shady NSFW ads. That's the closest to the libertarian anarchy ideal we had in 90s.
There's of course alphabet agencies mining data and pushing narratives, but that's fine.
For example, if the readership of this news service was entirely US-based, then it would only publish a single article on the Ukraine war---when it started---and then might only ever mention it again if it has a direct practical effect on US residents, like travel restrictions.
That's the entire point. Who are you to decide that? How can you quantify 'likelyhood to be materially affected'? How can you empirically determine if 'someone can do something about X'?
Your opinion is worth the same as the next guy's. Anarchy and no moderation whatsoever, in this context, is always better no matter how you try to rationalize it. The only problem is that it makes is harder to tell the signal from the noise (noise being fake stuff, tangential topics, hearsay, bullshit, etc.). But the opposite is much much worse.
And I'm generally in agreement that most attempts to quantify 'truth' in media are hopelessly dependent on personal bias---but this mostly shows up in category #2 in my list. In things where you'd never know the difference if it were true or not, because it would never affect you either way.
The reason I thought a news service like this would work better as a government service than a private entity is because a government news service's commitment to the principles I listed could be defined by enforceable laws. "Likely to materially affect people" is something that you could reasonably argue about in a courtroom, just as much as other fuzzily-defined legal concepts like libel or false advertising.
I'm imagining a news agency whose legal responsibilities were defined in such a way that it could be sued if one of the following happened:
1. It reports something that no reasonable person would believe meets the criteria.
2. Readers experience some kind of material harm that could have been avoided if they had read news reported in another outlet but not this one. And this harm is not the result of the reader being in some very small minority of readers (say, <1%), because after a certain point this will always be true for things that affect a very small number of people.
The problem is whoever controls the government and controls the news is also the one enforcing the laws.
You want to see suppression of “fake news”, aka anything that makes the ruling party look bad, then look no further than government run media services.
I think they thought long and hard before they add freedom of the press to the bill of rights.
NPR does a half-assed good job of providing unbiased news (they unironically claim that title) as long as it isn’t some hot button issue like Roe v Wade. In those cases they go into full on partisan politics propaganda machine mode. My absolute favorite, as I enjoy the absurd, was trotting out some kids who grew up in foster care with the implication that they would have been better off if their mother had had an abortion. Just an example, not a statement of purpose.
I know that it is not as applicable today, but you should really look into the whole 'separation of powers' thing.
Congress can pass all the laws it wants but they have no power to ensure they are being acted upon. And sometimes have no power to stop them from being violated like the whole Trail of Tears thing where a sitting president blatantly violated the law with no repercussions.
What does the Judicial branch do again?
Since you brought up that abortion segment, here is another from last November when they ran audio of an actual abortion. Beware - it's brutal:
https://www.npr.org/2022/11/03/1133790770/what-its-like-insi...
Why do you think this? What is your basis for this claim? Note specifically that in unmoderated channels, governments already do participate with propaganda, so your claim that the only problem is distinguishing signal from noise is false by your own stated standards.
Agenda in reporting is a problem, there is no question, but I don’t buy for a second that anarchy is “always” better or even often better. I would agree that there are times when it helps, but I think it’s closer to few and far between, and that the noise and chaos in the mean time is detrimental and damaging to someone’s ability to see truth when it does come through. To use the example from this thread, 4chan is usually demonstrably and objectively worse than any mainstream news at sharing important, relevant, and true information.
Are you talking about trivial news reporting ("this thing happened today")? If so, yes.
If you're talking about important questions in society, no. I mean, if you want full-on propaganda you can read the New York Times or The Atlantic, or Washington Post, etc. Aside from tangible reporting, your probability of finding truth about important questions in society is extremely low, while they tout it to be really high -- extremely disingenuous. And yes, in all of these places the Opinion section has adquired so much relevance that they are no longer newspapers in the traditional sense.
On the other hand, if you want actual truth, you'll have to read through tons of bullshit, slurs, memes, jokes, fake news, fake tweets, CIA narratives, Mossad/JIDF narratives, but it will be there... buried somewhere deep in a 4chan thread. The great thing about this is that there's no pretense, it's: come at your own risk, use common sense, take everything with a grain of salt, "everything said here is satire".
> Note specifically that in unmoderated channels, governments already do participate with propaganda
That's definitely true, there's even specific slurs for those pushing propaganda. But that's the beauty of it, there could be conflicting narratives being pushed at once, and there's no way to tell whether someone believes it or is just shilling. At the end of the day, it's just an anonymous comment and you can only determine it's value based on the content of the post. You can't even safely tell if it's a human or a bot nowadays.
I have no doubt in my mind that the free flow of information is always better. Now, you can argue about the practicity of this, and you'd be right. The thing is, this is a symptom of the state of affairs. Think about it, there are 8 billion people walking on Earth, a great proportion of which have a computer with an internet connection and a high quality camera in their pockets. That means that this year will be the most commented on, most recorded in human history by far. On top of that, there are governments around the world spending billions of US dollars in propaganda. It's no wonder 'truth' is obfuscated and almost impossible to come by.
This twisted argument seems to be claiming that 4chan is more trustworthy because it’s less trustworthy. But you’re demonstrating a double standard. If you can excuse and overlook the unending ocean of fake news and propaganda and bullshit on 4chan, then it’s only fair and consistent to do the same for mainstream news, where it’s also true that not everything is propaganda. You’re whole complaint boils down to you writhing against the “pretense”, but why does that matter, exactly? You either care about the truth or not, so the reputation shouldn’t be a factor for you, especially if you seek information from disreputable sources.
So the bottomline of what I'm trying to say would be: if you exclusively consume mainstream news, you're probably more vulnerable to adhere to a narrow viewpoint, and maybe not even know there are people who disagree.
Similar to how HN operates when discussing a blog post, especially clickbaity posts -- when reading the comments you may see that there's more to the story or that the author is wrong about something. Sometimes that has helped me get a more nuanced perspective on a specific topic.
This is why “Q” claimed to be a high-level government official, for example, to attempt to establish authority. Pretense, or just experience or expertise or authority, is always there even with the stuff on 4chan.
The authority of a source is a shortcut for evaluating the truth of a source’s information. I think this is what @t12hrow meant by the question of practicality. It takes a long time to verify information on it’s merits alone.
In a funny way, this incentivises swiming against the current, so there's never a consensus.
Karma on the other hand only creates a chilling effect, beacuse you're either banned or shadowbanned or somehow silenced. Take HN for example, if you post something controversial here not only it doesn't get more visibility, but it's grey-ed out and thrown to the bottom.
The reality these places are pushing, including HN, is out of touch with society. Even the European stuff is so out of touch I get crazy looks and responses when I’ve asked people (Europeans) about them.
Of course, it's still small scale in relation to behemoths like Twitter, FB, Insta, TikTok.
Some boards are incredibly slow given the popularity of the site as a whole, threads on boards like /n/ can stay up for weeks with barely any replies.
Citizens that are active and care, is what's necessary for democracy to work, that is, citizens which actively monitor, and participate in, political developments. Mere "informed voters" just voting once every 4-5 years do not really make democracy, even if we were to be generous and assume that the elections-very-X-years model and the existing representation hierarchies system are adequate.
Beyond that, for real democracy to work, the number one source of information of citizens should be real life experience with other citizens that they're actively learning from (their issues, grievances, etc with laws, political decisions, officials, etc) and collaborate with. Not the media.
In other words, voter who 99.9% of the time tend to their private affairs alone, can't make democracy work.
How can the real life experiences of people I know possibly inform me about Ukraine, Chinese foreign policy, the SVB bailout, pandemic issues, etc. etc. etc.?
State level policy depends on public support or opposition. For example, re Ukraine, US policymakers and others - from Fox News to the Russians to internationalists and many others - are carefully monitoring public opinion and trying to shape it.
They are investing a lot of time and resources in that. Why are they doing it if public opinion doesn't matter?
Arguable - I'd say even unlikely in most real world situations. The US has recently had a wildly unpopular president who showed remarkable indifference to said public opposition. And relying on the media to gauge public support, or inform the populace in objective terms about the actions of their representatives, is inadvisable. It is not difficult to find instances of the same media organizations arguing both in favor and against public policies depending on the elected official enacting them[0][1]. In that regard, mainstream media seems more akin to a tool of propaganda, shaping opinion and manufacturing consent after the fact, than a useful organ of democratic governance.
The issue is that the control the population realistically has over their representatives in a democratic republic like every (?) modern democracy is by necessity of the size of said governments extremely limited. You can't have a referendum on every issue, so for the most part all the public gets to decide is if someone did a good job over the last X years. I recommend reading Democracy for Realists for a more in-depth look, but suffice to say that that level of interaction is far too coarse to guide public policy on immediate, subtle, and complex issues like Ukraine, COVID, or Chinese foreign policy. If something is not a core issue (i.e. something that the parties have split and staked their identities on, like women's rights, access to guns, immigration, etc) or is so universally desirable that everyone just wants more of it (i.e. visible short-term economic growth - note that long-term economic growth is generally not rewarded by the electorate), policymakers have essentially no incentive to actually care, because their voters won't care enough about those issues when it matters to sway their vote one way or another.
To your last question; the public's opinion of a decision doesn't influence whether a policymaker will make the decision. The point of the media is not to inform the public on what their representatives are doing, it is to shape the narrative of politics in the country. The actual decisions, the policy positions, are for the most part incidental to that. The causal arrow goes the other way. See also: [2][3][4]
[0]: https://mobile.twitter.com/BaldingsWorld/status/153358567932...
[1]: https://www.racket.news/p/the-sovietization-of-the-american (search "Khashoggi")
[2]: https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2019/01/marc-edwards-...
[3]: https://www.reddit.com/r/chomsky/comments/c1fk5l/newsweek_in...
Also notice how I said "the number one source of information" and not "the sole source of information".
And it's not just about "people you know". When far more citizens were far more politically active, e.g. in the sixties and seventies for example, you could learn about developments in any part of the US, and actual perspectives and experiences of people involved, be it workers, blacks, gays, student, veterans, and so on - without reading an establishment print media once.
People and citizens movements were networked and exchanging experiences and perspectives, and they didn't even have internet, they had to do it by mouth, snail mail, real world gatherings, indie press, and so on.
1. I think serious news media (not just any news media) is more reliable than 'people you know'. People you know, now manifested in social media, is the vector for the virulant phenomenon of disinformation and misinformation.
> When far more citizens were far more politically active, e.g. in the sixties and seventies for example, you could learn about developments in any part of the US, and actual perspectives and experiences of people involved, be it workers, blacks, gays, student, veterans, and so on - without reading an establishment print media once.
Could you give some examples or evidence of that? Did you experience it yourself? I'm not saying people had no information then, but I think they have far more now via the Internet (information including disinfo and misinfo).
Active citizens are like leaders of a group. A group needs a leader but a group also needs its members.
Realize that while they might make it more likely for some, this is not the default. You should not feel anxious just consuming regular news. If you do you should probably talk to a doctor as this seems like an unhealthy thing.
> 2. To let you know about world events that affect others far away, in order to judge the effectiveness of political decisions and the necessity of future political decisions.
> 3. As a form of entertainment derived from the ongoing story of world history (or celebrity gossip, or whatever else).
The stories people classify as "positive" are exclusively category 3. Crime stories are entertainment, charity porn (especially about children doing charity work), stories about sick people and animals that got well again, all entertainment. Sports. Stories about soldiers and cops that are framed as inspiring and patriotic. None of it is news, it's messaging.
It only makes sense. News that affects people is mostly news of problems, or more accurately, actionable news. "Ongoing Processes Maintaining Themselves As Planned" isn't news that affects you unless it's a followup on "Potential Problem Found In Ongoing Process." The other actionable news is "Event Occurring That You May Wish To Take Part In," and the "news" doesn't care about those unless the "event" writes a check.
Bad news usually does that - in that it helps us reflect that “well at least i’m not THAT guy!”
I didn't read a single political news story in the ensuing six months. Some of the happiest months of my life. These days I will read the section headlines on Memeorandum if I'm out and about, every week or so. I have found that I no longer have any interest at all in the contents of the stories. Most seem so petty.
I don't honestly give a f*ck if someone on either side of the aisle is caught doing something immoral, because there has been zero consequences during my 50 years of life. The vast majority of power players (politicians, businesspeople and celebrities) get off scott free, so I've just opted out of caring.
So much happier as a result.
It's among the most useful piece of advice I've ever had.
Today I've gotten much bigger value for my time when reading about various CLI tools that process and ingest / export data (recent thread about `miller`) than all of the above, combined.
HN, I feel, became more popular, and that has hurt its quality. So yes, I started reducing my consumption of it as well. I treat it like all other news sites 99% of the time, and I am right to do so at least 90% of them. I barely find 2-3 good articles per week these days.
Soon I might start checking HN biweekly because the value proposition is just not there.
1. I'll actually take you up on this, because I'm interested to re-visit the discourse around launch, 5 years from now :)
2. I do agree it's overhyped to a degree. I think it will revolutionize _some_ things but it could turn out like VR. I do use it every day and I don't see a reason not to... I guess we'll see what the future holds!
The practitioners of the area of course have a vested interest to argue until the end of days that ACTUALLY AI does equal ML/DL and stuff but I am like "I see no Skynet so get off my back, we have no AI and that's that". :D
But, I guess in 5 years we could argue whether certain progresses are indeed attributed to ChatGPT or is it something else entirely!
The days of understanding our own code are rapidly coming to an end. As developers, we now have the same problem that the mathematical community has had to deal with for some time, as proofs become complex enough to demand large chunks of peoples' careers to comprehend and evaluate.
Prompts may or may not be the next revolution in the graphic arts, but they will be the next revolution in programming languages. I've seen more than enough to conclude that.
That's one possible development of events, yes. The other one is inventing DSLs on top of popular languages so we're spared tons of boilerplate; but then we'll need experts on the actual underlying languages (say C++, Rust, Lua, Erlang or anything with a good VM and/or statically strongly typed and compiled to native code) when sh1t hits the fan, which... actually can work just fine.
Whether humans are able to create strong AI is a philosophical question: While some argue that's not possible (can we be Gods?), others argue that this is the next logical evolutionary step.
Let's see if we can at least mimic strong AI when we let LLMs connect to external systems (internet, money, more energy, etc) and specifically allow themselves to fine-tune or train new NNs in general.
Time will tell.
> This is why I prefer the term "weak AI". Weak AI is specifically trained to solve tasks whereas strong AI can teach itself to solve new tasks.
Yes, we can call it a spectrum, though I'd think it's more like a multi-dimensional space. Wouldn't contest your definition though, it's as valid as all the others really.
And yeah I agree/think that the ultimate general AI is the one that can teach itself new tasks, utilize past experience even if the patterns don't match perfectly, and have some sort of sentience. And let's not forget that it must have actual goals and motivation (otherwise it'll just conclude that the best course of action is to not expend any effort and just put itself in an infinite idle loop).
> Whether humans are able to create strong AI is a philosophical question: While some argue that's not possible (can we be Gods?), others argue that this is the next logical evolutionary step.
IMO people romanticize these topics too much. The true AI will be "born" as a hyper-optimizing recursive machine (and collection of algorithms) and it will eventually get limited by the physical reality it inhabits so it'll self-balance quite fine. It's strange how much spiritual value people put into these things, though I somewhat understand; that'll be the second truly intelligent and sentient "life form" that we will know beside ourselves so some metaphysical hand-waving seems unavoidable and maybe even desirable (in terms of moral correction mechanism, maybe).
> Let's see if we can at least mimic strong AI when we let LLMs connect to external systems (internet, money, more energy, etc) and specifically allow themselves to fine-tune or train new NNs in general.
I have no doubt we'll eventually get there but my feeling is that the current "AI" area is in a local maxima and it won't crawl out of it easily.
It's a fact that somebody somewhere thought of making better bearings for their horse-pulled carriages centuries ago. That person does not get credit for modern cars' suspension systems however.
I'm autistic and vehemently ignore and reject most pieces of news, especially political, and that causes tons of terrible things to happen whenever some sort of spoiler gets out and I happen to see it.
It's like I'm proud of my great ignorance and having that threatened with mere knowledge sends me into a panic of some sort.
It's not just news. If I say "I don't know what that is lol" to someone, 9 times out of 10 their default response to tell me what it is (if it is some cultural/media thing) is the complete opposite of what I want, which is usually just for the other person to move on without telling.
Knowing things can't be undone, so I strive not to know most things, apparently.
You’re likely to come across not entirely socially acceptable in either case, but that’s probably impossible to counter.
This is something that I understand, but unfortunately can't really perform for some reason. I always have to be... "honest", for lack of a better word. I will always say something that makes things worse for me because it's... just how I feel.
I used to be a pathological liar, and from a young age I had this one friend who was a living lie detector, and they trained it out of me so hard that I now obsessively tell the truth in all situations even when it would be detrimental. ;-;
In other words, even if I know just saying "ok" would probably work, I feel the need to somehow "brag" or otherwise disclose my proud ignorance, even if that only results in the literal opposite of what I want.
The vast majority of what is offered as 'news' isn't news at all, it's gossip, schadenfreude, arbitrary drama, and frivolous feel-good stories.
'News' has a ring of plausible importance. I wish we had a more accurate name reflecting its mostly unimportant, worthless, and destructive nature.
To a degree, that's what journalists should do: They are not writing a history book. They can't wait until all the facts are out or we'd never know if someone was arrested or accused until the trial was over.
It's philosophical theory that human judgment could be just completely arbitrary and that all these arbitrary opinions have equal weight. But it's cheap theory - not good enough for the first day of philosophy class - and transparently wrong, and has nothing to do with reality. We (you included) make imperfect but not random judgments all day every day, using many skills and inputs.
> that was a freudian slip, right?
Your assertion isn't about Freudian slips.
But reading your text, it is probably useless to talk to you about humorous viewpoints...
Propaganda.
In my book, even the supposedly important news are pure poison for the individual, and at the end of the day, unimportant as well.
People that need to push a new or current narrative will likely disagree, but that is predictable. They dont want their hate-channel to be closed down.
What station is it? Asking with an open heart and mind. I would love it if such a thing exists in this day and age.
I like WSB-TV and the early morning broadcast only. Lots of local news less the 5 o’clock prime time breaking news type stuff. Perhaps the key is picking the right time of day.
I also pay for PBS/GPB but I am someone who can filter out partisan topics and welcome both liberal and conservative discussions. At the end of the day I make my own conclusions and I’m not afraid to break party lines.
But if you're not reading your local paper, you might not even have known. Of course all three of mine are INCREDIBLY partisan, which is great because they're partisan in different ways :)
edit: To add more color: "local news" is increasingly not local anymore. The video I linked to is a collection of "local" stations that are owned by Sinclair reading from the same script rather literally.
And if I weren't doing that, I'd go no-news. That's fine too.
Some of the partisan issues are not silly if you are affected by it. To pick a left issue, if you are gay and would like to marry your partner and get the benefits of such legal recognition, the differences are very consequential. To pick a right issue, if you think that Democrats are voting illegally by the millions, then addressing such threats to Democracy is incredibly important.
There are many other issues where there is a real difference. As an affluent, well educated, older white guy with job security, I'm well insulated from many of the issues. But I have empathy for the people who can't be so aloof; to say "both sides are equally bad" across the board is lazy enlightened centrism.
But how I vote is different: just straight down for whatever is the minority party in my state. Only battleground states get the pandering, and I'll stop doing this if I ever live in a battleground state or they change how voting works. State propositions are a separate thing.
And who will make decisions for you? Who will take on your responsibilities? What other authority is there? When we are children, we can be irresponsibile and our parents ultimately see to them. As adults, there's nobody else; it's just us.
C'mon, we can think deeper than that. One soldier doesn't matter; are militaries useless? One software developer can't do much on a sizeable project; should we abandon all software? All open source? One journalist, one HN comment, etc. etc. When can one person accomplish much by themselves?
You're right, one person alone doesn't accomplish much, yet somehow humanity has accomplished incredible things. We are social creatures, we naturally work together to build and do amazing things. Please join us! The sky is the limit, and not even that since 1961.
(I am not judging your choices. I honestly don't know the correct answer.)
Claiming powerlessness is an excuse to avoid the stress of our times. Now, more than ever, people need to step up and take responsibility.
I doubt that's true. Certainly not if we are all reading broadly and shallowly, from a few dozen media sources all trying to trigger outrage.
It would be true if we all looked deeply at different topics. Then voting would represent some combination of all of that deep knowledge.
If not, ignore all news. If the line is crossed or going to be crossed soon. Then get involved.
* news.com.au = clickbait
* government funded ones = abc, sbs are free and ok
* 9 news, 7 news = negative
* google news = aggregator of mostly negative news
* AFR, Sydney Morning Herald, .. few others = ok
My experience with twitter has been the following:
* I look at some content I subscribed for (humor, or tech related)
* Then it feeds suggestions which spiral downwards into negativity (sometimes extreme - like videos of people getting shot). Soon, I resent twitter and the platform.
Experience with youtube: meh, but not as bad as Twitter as described above
Experience with Quora: better and interesting
Facebook: I avoid
TikTok (my wife's): interesting content - but happy to view via my wife's mobile, since it naturally limits my consumption
Netflix: good and bad, but ok
The top article on abc at the moment is clickbaity and niche, although, I give credit to it actually being of relevance to some people.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-03-18/leaky-buildings-poor-...
You are looking at the wrong sites. There are many - more than I can read - which focus on serious news.
Where it is reported a reason for consumption "...negative information automatically activating threat responses and leading one to deduce that ...motivations may make ‘fear’ and ‘anger’ more influential...
Expecting someone else to do it is playing a victim and a child - it is us, there's nobody else; there are no parents or authorities to take care of us while we act out. People following your path are why nothing happens. People who act are the reason many do face consequences.
Look at the world that was built for you - the freedom, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, the technology, health care, roads, schools, etc. They were built by the prior generations, not by people who quit under stress. What are you building?
The best tactic of the people with power is to get people like you to give up yours, because the public has the ultimate power. Why do you think people in power invest so much in persuasion, disinformation, etc.? If you were powerless, it wouldn't matter.
If you claim news is useless, what are you doing on HN that is so useful? (And see the headlines from Memeorandum, below.)
> there has been zero consequences during my 50 years of life
That's a falsehood, and if more need to face consequences, that is up to you and me.
> Memeorandum
Here are the current headlines. Many have great impact on the future of our country, on the freedom and financial security of hundreds of millions. You don't care about anyone else, including yourself? That's not a persuasive argument.
* Trump attorney ordered to testify before grand jury investigating former president
* Law enforcement agencies are prepping for a possible Trump indictment as early as next week
* ‘The Wire’ Star Lance Reddick Dead at 60
* Wyoming Becomes First State to Outlaw Abortion Pills
* My Struggle Session at Stanford Law School
* Two gifts to Trump family from foreign nations are missing, report says
* ICC issues arrest warrant for Putin over war crimes in Ukraine
* House GOP ignored Capitol Police requests to review public Jan. 6 footage, lawyer says
* Michigan Is Becoming The Anti-Florida On LGBTQ Rights ― And A Lot More
* Biden jokes he's ‘really not Irish’ because he's sober, doesn't have relatives ‘in jail’
* America Has Decided It Went Overboard on Covid-19
* Biden asks Congress to impose tougher penalties on executives of failed banks
* Just Because ChatBots Can't Think Doesn't Mean They Can't Lie
* Derek Chauvin, ex-officer convicted of killing George Floyd, pleads guilty to federal tax evasion
* As crucial legal test for Antifa ideology heads to trial, right-wing media also scrutinized
... etc. (list is getting too long)
> My Struggle Session at Stanford Law School
> Two gifts to Trump family from foreign nations are missing, report says
> Michigan Is Becoming The Anti-Florida On LGBTQ Rights ― And A Lot More
> Biden jokes he's ‘really not Irish’ because he's sober, doesn't have relatives ‘in jail’
> Just Because ChatBots Can't Think Doesn't Mean They Can't Lie
> Derek Chauvin, ex-officer convicted of killing George Floyd, pleads guilty to federal tax evasion
> As crucial legal test for Antifa ideology heads to trial, right-wing media also scrutinized
I live on the west coast and the above items you mentioned are pure sensationalism and have absolutely nothing to do with me, my state, or my local community. They add absolutely no value, informational or otherwise, to my life. They do not help me make more informed choices for me and my family or better my life in any discernible way.
You want to care about all that fluff and noise? Good for you. Just don't go around pretending to be a better person for that, or denigrating others who don't fall for that crap. People like you are part of the problem, not the solution.
> pure sensationalism
Political censorship in elite law schools, corruption by your President, AI dangers, justice, political oppression. Those things can certainly affect you and do, and will. The freedom of future Americans and people around the world depends on you - there's nobody else to do it for you. We're on our own. Let's get to work!
While you fight for this narrative, you surrender your power to others who are determing the course of your life. You are doing just want they want.
While not a news site, Reddit has many large subreddits that repost news from other sites. They frequently make it to the front page.
Banishing every single one of them off my front page definitely makes scrolling through it less headache-inducing.
And of course, negative news would resonate more with a person who is in a bad mood.
Hope, being good enough, your time is your time and desire mitigation is a solution.
Productize and scale happiness
You can only paint with a broad brush but it's not exactly hard to pick out groups that will be net recipients of relative power and wealth in various collapse scenarios.
If the financial system collapses people who own capital in whole (e.g. some tradesman with his van full of tools) and people who own "promises" of things (the contents of your 401k, bank account, etc) lose. If high level government collapses people who are associated with alternate sources of organization and administration (local government, the church) win. If local government collapses people who depended a lot on those services lose and people who already went without win.
Remember, money and political capital are convertible to each other to an extent so that complicates things as well.
So it's perfectly rational for people to root for the kind of specific tumultuous change that would benefit them.
Those who don't have a lot to lose are more interested in a chaotic phase that rolls the dice and will quickly reshuffle the social order. The rich are moving into gated communities, they're not looking forward to living in a mad max world -- they're trying to keep that world out.
To get mad max, we have to have alternative energy production and storage be cheap enough for broke people to afford. Even then, they'd need to be able to afford enough of that energy that they can spend huge amounts of it riding around looking for other people to steal from rather than spending the energy on farming and heating their homes. Raiding might work for post apocalyptic populations in Florida or South Carolina. I imagine the climate might be conducive to that sort of thing. But in a world with no energy deliveries, spending what little energy you have so frivolously would quickly doom you and your family if you live in Minnesota, Illinois, or Wisconsin for instance.
Wait until you see those who want to create a nuclear war somewhere to make an apocalypse happen so that Jesus of Nazareth can come back. Then there are also ones who believe that the nuclear apocalypse must be global for Jesus to return. Have your next shock when you discover that these people actually have politicians among them. Then another one when you discover that the last US Sect. of State himself publicly admitted to be one of those...
Here's hoping that we're wise enough to not let reddit admits dictate world health policy again.
I set acceptable times for when I review stuff and even then I try hard to curate it as much as possible to avoid mindless scrolling. It is not easy and you get psychological jitters ( and you try to channel it some other ways ) and you can feel your hard trying to reach for that mouse.
But overall the results were/are worth it. Sure, we are facing eventual extinction of human race, but one could argue that has been the case for several decades now so I sleep much better.
More specifically the things you don't have control over.
https://theconversation.com/new-research-shows-trolls-dont-j... (New research shows trolls don’t just enjoy hurting others, they also feel good about themselves)
And normal people love self-serving, simplistic, "just so" stories.
All reading the news ever did was make me upset about things I couldn't change.
I don't bother with online news; most of it is irrelevant to me. If a national story has some bearing on my life, it'll usually end up in the local Sunday paper anyway.
Or consume different news. Ad-driven news is vastly more crisis-impending than subscription-driven news, which tends to be more contemplative as well as zoom out and explore regions and issues that aren't in spotlight. (I read the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Economist, Information, Monde Diplomatique and Paris Review, in addition to a number of stacks.)
Basically they scraped up every bit of "Bad News" they could find. Murders, robberies, car wrecks and natural disasters. After a few months of that I noticed I was getting depressed after consuming all that. I'd wake up feeling fine, go to work and get done and still feeling fine. But after that hour and a half I felt like life sucked.
So I quit watching it and the depression went with it. Since then I've made a point monitor the news and learned to keep that in perspective with what's going on close to me.
BTW, that News station was one of the very 1st to be bought up by "FOX". Since then they pivoted from focusing on tragedy to political outrage, but the effect on ones view of life is obviously very much connected to the "news" they consume, and a great many are attracted to gloom and doom and outrage.
Every state should have a similar paper.
But Nature's running Upworthy and dictionary-based classification? It's almost low-N by today's standards. This is the sort of paper that could have been written a couple of decades ago.
I suspect you wanted research where people look at the world and discover what it means. This is the other kind, where people decide what they want the world to look like, then paint their data to reflect that.
Maybe I'll become informed again when news becomes more balanced, but I am waiting.
TV news has the same problem. After the Eagles broke up, drummer Don Henley nailed it with one of his first solo hits, Dirty Laundry:
I make my livin' off the evenin' news
Just give me somethin', somethin' I can use
People love it when you lose
They love dirty laundry
Well, I coulda' been an actor, but I wound up here
I just have to look good, I don't have to be clear
Come and whisper in my ear
Give us dirty laundry
If I had unlimited cash and I was the editor, my front pages would be tongue-in-cheek nods to negative stories, like "CRIME ON PAGE 15" so they'd have to flip through a meadow of full page color ads of sakura trees, the textual equivalent of green noise.
Archive.org has a pleasant viewing experience if you flip through many of the fully-scanned magazines, simply because there are no digital popups- at least the ads on the pages are inert and unable to cause a virus.
Negatives are problems to be solved, if enough people care maybe they will be solved too. Whereas positives don't need solving (though can still be good to think about to avoid throwing out the baby with the bathwater when addressing a negative.
Of course not all negatives can be solved themselves. If it's "X was killed due to Y" then of course X is dead so nothing more can be done for X but maybe we can prevent issue Y killing someone else Z in the future.
I try to click less on negative stories and more on positive stories. Negative things can make me angry or sad and I dislike being angry or sad. Also I find many negative news to be tiresome.
An alternative approach is to consume news from multiple countries (including your own). It's so interesting to see how all the fnords are different and just how conditioned you were to consume the one kind of media designed for your country.
It’s not just the macabre dopamine rush of car crashes and natural disasters. Critiques involving total and complete destruction of the restaurant/play/movie/album — like this classic takedown of Guy Fieri’s monstrosity of a Times Square restaurant https://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/14/dining/reviews/restaurant... —always draw the most eyeballs.
Let's not forget we went trough four "once in a lifetime disaster" by now. Or more depending how you count.
Today I make a conscious effort to check a channel content before consuming any drama in it. If the channel is 100% drama I pass, regardless of how captivating the original link was,to try and break out of the algorithm.
Great success.
I thought to myself: Why do I need to know person-x was one in 3 million to get killed? Why is this compelling? Is there a risk to me?
Was such an overtly negative feeling to watch that. Turned it off half way through the run.
Actually, it's much more specific than that: outrage.
Novelty makes it more viral.
Propinquity also increases the response (similarity between reader and subject).
In terms of manufacturing consent/sentiment, people who watch more local news tend to drift their views of police and authorities to more favorably. And everyone should know what the effect is of Fox News on its viewers.
At some point, I had to take a break, because awareness of so many problems was overwhelming, and also there were diminishing returns (most problems are ongoing or recurring).
Years later, I found myself following local news for the locale where I was living (and where I had some large complaints about that locale). Eventually, I realized that, unlike before, I was subconsciously looking for and drawn to stories that reinforced my dislike for that locale. Reading was like ranting. This seemed very unhealthy, so I stopped.
One idea for LLMs would be to give me weekly or monthly updates on the news, or catch me up after some arbitrary break period. Maybe a more flexible NYT Week In Review.
Real News should be government driven. News and not click headlines. And it is in finland and GB, atleast one alternative among the market ones. Don't know about the GB one but in finland the YLE has crazy overgrown budget that just grows and grows, too many people working with too much time and the result is that it's not anymore "government basic information agency for every citizen" but a hundreds of ppl with no real work, but just to make gay, lesbian and lqbqt content on the headlines and everywhere. The amount of unbiblical sickness of sex-related vomiting is just so much that it must be the end of times..
I'd be more interested in a study of "persecution" news, the us-vs-them narrative that has become much more common in the last 20-30 years and which I think drives a lot of the so-called polarity of political dialogue.
Also it would be interesting to see effects in decentralized publishing, e.g. youtube/tiktok & independent journalism, since those are so much more prevalent and integral to the broader media narrative now.
Your ancestors clicked on the article that said "lion."
If there's perception of injustice or bad practice in the community, then yes people will click the negativity. Apart from that there's the "popcorn" consumption, where negative things are more entertaining.
Let that shit go immediately, once you become aware. And if at all possible, spend time working to develop mindfulness (a meditation/introspection practice is very helpful).
Freakonomics had a decent episode which explained some of these mechanisms.
Ultimately, news is indistinguishable from information, and information is valuable if you're able to tell the signal from the noise, extract the meaning, and find the balance between getting the most value and not wasting time. You can use that information to make decisions over your own life: should I invest in X? Should I work in Y? Should I move to Z?
For example, amid the tech layoffs and the rise of AI tools to write code, I think one should reconsider starting a career path in software engineering
That is, unless you're completely self sufficient and living off the grid, in which case you don't need any of it.
News(events) = boring but useful News(events + narratives) = juicy and less useful
I wrote about this more extensively here: https://claritynews.substack.com/p/a-lesson-in-how-media-and...
The thing driving consumption is engagement. So what can news provide that drives engagement?
Incomplete narrative.
Conflict is probably the most familiar place to find an incomplete narrative. The easiest way to present conflict is from a negative perspective. A problem that is missing a solution is very easy to engage with.
Mystery is another. What really happened? What will happen next? Speculate!
These are broadly considered "lazy journalism", and for good reason. Controversial narratives are trivial to construct, even when the controversy itself is fake. Mystery is either an incomplete story or speculative fiction.
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The best works of journalism present a complete story, but that doesn't leave much to engage with. It might be interesting. It might be complicated. It might be important. Is that enough? Sometimes.
Stories that good don't get written every day. If they did, they would become relatively mundane. The news does get published every day. What can we do except to fill the days in between with conflict and mystery?
What kinds of engagement are actually positive? Can they compete?
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I visit hacker news because it is thriving with examples of positive engagement.
New tools, educational exposition, open questions, historical exploration, etc. Many of the posts here aren't news per se, but they are better than vain controversy.
I think that news organizations should diversify their content and presentation formats. Find more alternatives to "new" than opinion and speculation. Present opportunities for objectivity instead of neatly wrapped conclusions.
Because the business model of media (old or new) requires a large audience, the least common denominator inexorably pushes content towards the basest human emotions and targets the least educated (as they are the vast majority of people).
This is how we end up with the History channel focusing on Nazis and Ancient Aliens and Bravo transforming from a channel focused on the arts such as Opera, to broadcasting Real Housewives non stop.
In terms of social media, it’s the same incentives. Those that post or share the most inflammatory content get more reactions and engagement. Even cat pics produce the same level of emotion, except on the opposite end of the spectrum.
What’s not rewarded is intelligent discourse. See also “eternal September”.
A nice new trend is the small newsletter subscription model, where those that most appreciate in-depth, detailed thought are able to support it directly. But this model is simply a boutique solution, and it won’t result in another Time Warner.
Followed by a row for the Ukraine invasion followed by a spotlight section containing: "the poison umbrella" on cold war killings, some babble about hugh grant and complaining about the Oscars, a somewhat not negative story about childcare funding?
~20 completely negative and/or garbage babbling stories on the page before one somewhat decent one sounds exactly the same to me.
The crime is marketing benign events as risk.
Biden & Trump Get Into Food Fight at Restaurant?
More and More Americans Deal With Evictions.
Question: Which of these two stories will get more clicks for an advertiser? Click-bait pays the bills for our news. NYT is an obvious example. Their stories? How much home can a million buy in Portland. Which $600,000 apartment would you choose in Brooklyn.
Negativity is certainly a factor in click-bait but lets pin the tail on the donkey: targeted advertising as a business model.
All of the profit-driven outleys are subject to market pressures. Even NYTimes which won more Pulitzer prizes than anyone admits to A/B testing headlines for clickbait. Let alone FOX News or YouTubers with “X does Y, immediately regregts it” and “Foo DESTROYS {group we hate}”
The profit motive and private ownership of the social networks and publications inevitably drives people into echo chambers and creates tribalism. Because the market selects for that over anything else. It’s not an accident that Twitter is so toxic, for instance.
Worse than just negativity, the media outlets selectively report on events in order to support their country’s narrative, often due to their government’s pressure. This can lead to wars and misunderstandings between huge populations, leading to violence.
This is why I started https://rational.app
It highlights what’s wrong with the for-profit news industry.
Are there more recent blog posts or is this all?
Simplify it.
I'd have to see your app in action to know what it really does, but it does sound like the same kind of distribution as Twitter.
If it bleeds, it leads
[Verse 1] I make my livin' off the evenin' news Just give me somethin', somethin' I can use People love it when you lose They love dirty laundry
[Verse 2] Well, I coulda' been an actor, but I wound up here I just have to look good, I don't have to be clear Come and whisper in my ear Give us dirty laundry [Chorus] Kick 'em when they're up Kick 'em when they're down Kick 'em when they're up Kick 'em when they're down Kick 'em when they're up Kick 'em when they're down Kick 'em when they're up Kick 'em all around
[Verse 3] We got the bubble-headed bleached-blonde, comes on at five She can tell you 'bout the plane crash with a gleam in her eye It's interesting when people die Give us dirty laundry
[Verse 4] Can we film the operation? Is the head dead yet? You know, the boys in the newsroom got a running bet Get the widow on the set! We need dirty laundry
[Verse 5] You don't really need to find out what's goin' on You don't really wanna know just how far it's gone Just leave well enough alone Eat your dirty laundry
[Chorus] Kick 'em when they're up Kick 'em when they're down Kick 'em when they're up Kick 'em when they're down Kick 'em when they're up Kick 'em when they're down Kick 'em when they're stiff Kick 'em all around
[Post-Chorus] (Kick 'em when they're up Kick 'em when they're down Kick 'em when they're up Kick 'em when they're down Kick 'em when they're up Kick 'em when they're down Kick 'em when they're stiff Kick 'em all around)
[Verse 6] Dirty little secrets, dirty little lies We got our dirty little fingers in everybody's pie We love to cut you down to size We love dirty laundry [Verse 7] We can do "The Innuendo", we can dance and sing When it's said and done, we haven't told you a thing We all know that crap is king Give us dirty laundry!
[Outro] (Kick 'em when they're up Kick 'em when they're down Kick 'em when they're up Kick 'em when they're down Kick 'em when they're up Kick 'em when they're down Kick 'em when they're up Kick 'em when they're down Kick 'em when they're up Kick 'em when they're down Kick 'em when they're up Kick 'em when they're down Kick 'em when they're up Kick 'em when they're down Kick 'em when they're up Kick 'em when they're down Kick 'em when they're up Kick 'em when they're down Kick 'em when they're up Kick 'em when they're down When they're up, when they're up Kick 'em when they're down Kick 'em when they're up Kick 'em when they're down Kick 'em when they're up Kick 'em when they're down Kick 'em when they're up Kick 'em when they're down Kick 'em when they're up Kick 'em when they're down)