Hacker News Reader

Comment by ar-nelson | Hacker News Reader

The way I see it, news serves three purposes:

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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).

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#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.

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>#2 is perhaps necessary for democracy to work

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.

> 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.

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.?

In what way are you allowed to change state level policy on those issues? Should you (and by extension, everyone in your democratic society) be allowed to do so?

> In what way are you allowed to change state level policy on those issues?

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?

>State level policy depends on public support or opposition.

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...

[4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_model

Democracy begins at home. If there's no active citizenry with real-world knowledge from discussion, colloboration, and participation in domestic issues, then there's just individuals being governed like cattle, and they being informed on whatever foreign issue doesn't matter: they'll just be listening to whatever those in power will be doing, like they do in domestic issues.

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.

Two points:

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).

Mere informed voters don’t make a democracy but a democracy wouldn’t exist if mere informed voters weren’t in the loop.

Active citizens are like leaders of a group. A group needs a leader but a group also needs its members.

> 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).

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.

I only recently discovered PBS news. I thought it was great to have #1, #2 without much entertainment. Realistically I stopped watching after a few weeks as it was kinda boring. There needs to be some #3 in any offering.

> perhaps government-funded

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.

I don't see how an unmoderated, anarchic space like 4chan is close to what I described; the entire point of what I had in mind is a very specific kind of moderation: stories are only published if (a) they're reasonably likely to materially affect some significant portion of readers sometime in the next 6 months, and (b) there's something they can do about it or in response to it.

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.

> (a) they're reasonably likely to materially affect some significant portion of readers sometime in the next 6 months, and (b) there's something they can do about it or in response to it.

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.

I get the sense that you think I'm saying more here than I actually am. I'm not proposing that this is the only kind of news that should exist, only that it would be nice if it existed for the kind of people that want to read (only) this kind of news.

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.

I understand what you're saying, and it would definitely make for an interesting experiment. If every news piece meets that criteria, it would be a very specific subset of news, but valuable nonetheless.

> …a government news service's commitment to the principles I listed could be defined by enforceable laws.

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.

> The problem is whoever controls the government and controls the news is also the one enforcing the laws.

I know that it is not as applicable today, but you should really look into the whole 'separation of powers' thing.

The executive branch is in charge of enforcing the laws and is also traditionally the leader of the party.

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.

> The executive branch is in charge of enforcing the laws

What does the Judicial branch do again?

Summed up NPR pretty well. I listen to NPR, but sometimes it gets a bit much on the partisan stuff. However, they are still my choice for anything news related. I noticed a big change in them around the 2016 election when they shut down their comment section.

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...

> Anarchy and no moderation whatsoever, in this context, is always better [...] the opposite is much much worse.

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.

> 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.

I appreciate the response, but yeah I just don’t buy that 4chan is better on any axis ever, especially for important world news. I see and acknowledge that you lack trust in mainstream news and your government, and there’s probably a longer story there, but I think it’s objectively false to claim you’ll find more truth on 4chan than mainstream news. It might be fair to say that certain subjects will be discussed that you wouldn’t see on TV, then again there’s almost no way to tell, and the stuff on 4chan is is rarely if ever made by people with any qualifications or expertise in the subject.

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.

That's a fair argument, and I can't dispute it. Thinking about this made me reflect a different way to put it. It shouldn't be one vs. the other, but rather, 4chan (and similar forums) are a meta reading of the news and train you to see blind spots or what's not being reported, listen to arguments from both sides of the aisle, and sprinkles a healthy dose of skepticism. After all, most of the discussion revolves around an extract from a maintream newspaper article or mainstream personality, so you're exposed to the "mainstream viewpoint" no matter what.

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.

FWIW I upvoted earlier but wanted to add that I agree with this completely, and got surprised by your kindness and acceptance and self-reflection, enough that I feel sheepish about my tone above.

Hey man not at all and I'm glad we found a middle ground. Cheers mate!

Isn’t the pretence important? If I talk to a bunch of people at the pub I’m likely to get various answers, increase the size of the pub and I’ll get to hear all kinds of different stuff and since it’s just people at a pub I can take it or leave it at my will. But when there’s perceived authority involved, a trusted newspaper, maybe a uni lecturer, that kind of thing, then it’s easy to be frustrated that you still have to treat them like people from a pub because they’ve spent considerable effort having me believe they’re better than that. Maybe it’s the difference in expectations between brainstorming and a final review, or a professional and an amateur.

Perceived authority of the source is important to the question of how many people trust & believe some information, yes, you’re right.

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.

But of course, that misses the nuance. Lots of US-based readers come from Ukraine, have friends or family in Ukraine, or friends or family in Russia or another neighbouring country. Of course, that might be fine if your media hypothetical outlet is just one of many. But then people will probably just still end up the ones with categories #2 and #3 regardless.

I wouldn't describe 4chan as karmaless. While the site bemoans the idea of upvotes (updoots), they'll also be the first to tell you how much they crave replies (which they call "you"s). We can see how much this affects the forum, with many people posting content, not because they think it is the best thing to post, but because they think it will get a reaction.

Yes, I've thought about that. In my opinion, the difference is that "you(s)" often reward controversial/contrarian takes. 4chan is already contrarian so what I mean here is going the opposite way. That is, you can go and post something that's completely against the culture of the forum and you'll get plenty of reactions. Even if it's just insults or slurs.

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.

4chan is a sick community where mental illness is coveted. You are correct about the 90s and finding true niche communities you could hang with, sharing ideas and ideology like the BBS days. Today is very different and the amount of brain washing put forth by anti-America bots and propaganda/make a buck machines is ridiculous.

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.

4chan only (sorta) works at a small scale, which it is. It's a niche. "No normies!"

I don't know if I consider it small scale, it has around 45M views a month according to similarweb: https://www.similarweb.com/website/4chan.org/#overview.

Of course, it's still small scale in relation to behemoths like Twitter, FB, Insta, TikTok.

Some qualification: It's small enough that each board has a global chrono view of posts, same with replies on posts. You can reply back and forth and still understand what's going on despite the other noise.

Given that there’s basically no way to interact besides posting or replying, I’m willing to bet most of that traffic is just lurkers. And another large chunk of that traffic probably congregates on boards like /a/ and /g/.

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.

State sponsored media generally hasn't worked out too well.

BBC is one of the best news sources around.

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).

PBS is essentially corporate media, getting ~15% of its budget from government. NPR is even less at ~2%.

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.

That's a pretty facile analysis. PBS and NPR both have affiliate models where the dozens of local public radio and tv operate independently and are funded separately utilizing the affiliate network to buy and sell content. They are mostly funded by membership, by government indirectly via CPB grants, and sponsorship.

You're right about the affiliate model. But most NPR stations in all but the largest markets predominantly run nationally syndicated content. Creating and syndicating that content is the NPR mothership's largest cost center, averaging 58% of operating expenses FY18-FY22.

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.

Totally agree wrt PBS & NPR. To the shock and horror of most everyone I know.

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".

I don't know how others do it, but my main tools are:

* 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.

Are you implying PBS does not have a commitment to a "rigorous journalistic mission"? It seems quite disingenuous to lump PBS and NPR as "corporate media" in the same light as corporate media entities like Fox News, CNN, et al.

Two different issues, right? Reasonable people can disagree with her PBS and NPR are corporate media.

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.

Since we are speaking of reasonable people, most reasonable people would define "corporate media" as for-profit entities either privately owned or with shareholders and which rely primarily on advertising to turn a profit. Nothing in that definition defines PBS or NPR as "essentially corporate media". What you are probably angling at is corporate underwriting -- in which case I can only direct you to read their statements of editorial standards and independence found on their websites. Now I suppose you will have to take their word here...but if not, then it's just an endless rabbit-hole of debate.

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.

>BBC is one of the best news sources around.

If I was drinking coffee my monitor and keyboard and mouse and desk would be ruined right now.

> BBC is one of the best news sources around.

I hope it's a joke. No one could say this with a straight face

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-64855760

CBC (in canada) is decent enough. I wouldn't call it amazing, but its not a failure (or propaganda) either.

> it will inspire constant anxiety

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.

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