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Comment by bastardoperator | Hacker News Reader

I just find it odd that someone interested in consuming news would choose to do so out of a dumpster when given a plethora of non-dumpster options.

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People share links with their friends online. If you login to facebook you will see links your friends shared.

This is a major source of traffic for media, along with say sharing links via imessage.

Almost no one logs onto facebook with the goal of "checking the news". But they see news there and it adds up to a lot of traffic because Facebook and instagram are huge. (The media posts clips to Facebook and Instagram and these can show up in feeds too if the post is popular enough)

Not wrong at all. But also after like 15 years of this mechanism, I’m comfortable ruling it as very, very not worth it. Compared to before FB had this format, do we even think the average person even reads more actual journalism than before? Pretty sure most of the “articles” people find through social media are more like ragebait from the political fringes because that’s what gets the views, clicks, comments, and reshares.

In light of that, a world with no news on Facebook would be just fine. If anyone is that uninterested in news that they would never check out a news site directly on their own, they won’t miss it.

Because it's not a dumpster.

It's a casino with flashing lights, exciting noise, and free cocktails.

It’s the same picture.jpg

A shiny, polished dumpster is still a dumpster.

Your average person never gave a shit about good content. That's the proof that's been visible for centuries, where there were newspapers, there were tabloids with giant click-bait headlines to make a quick buck and it always worked, because people don't want to read, they want just a headline to tell them how to feel.

But those average people are the majority of "views" of said paper, that's why all these media outlets are desperate for that ad revenue. They already have subscriber bases that are actual real interest in reading content.

Welcome to the sad reality of our world, crack open a cold one and laugh with the rest of us.

George Carlin said "imagine how stupid the average person is then realize half of all people are stupider than that."

George Carlin didn't understand the difference between mean and median. Whether this makes him one of the stupid people is an exercise for the reader.

Human intelligence is normally distributed which means the mean and median are the same.

Human intelligence is arguably not even truly ordinal, let alone cardinal. No one who reasonably understands human intelligence believes it's as simple as a normal distribution. IQ is defined as a normal distribution but that doesn't mean the difference between 100 to 110 IQ is comparable to the difference between 140 and 150 IQ. If you boil "human intelligence" down to nothing more than IQ, sure, but in reality there's no such thing as a mean here and median is tenuous as well.

George Carlin was smart enough to understand how to make a joke

Haha yeah he’s so right that most people are complete idiots. Not like us smart guys am I right brother?

HN definitely has

- above average content

- more well-thought-out comments

- a more technical, intelligent, and successful userbase

than the average website.

Or are you really trying to imply that it (and it's users) are not much different from, say, Reddit or a Fox News's comment section or TikTok or Facebook?

>more well-thought-out comments

Oh really? this one couldn't be bothered for a single complete sentence:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37030073

Don't kid yourself, this place is filled with karma farmers. Stop sniffing your own farts

"more" is not "all" or "always"

Being better than average at a couple things is extremely common. It's not delusional to point those things out.

Most websites are good at something (excluding spam sites).

Is it really that important to you to "win" the argument, that you had to write this piss poor comment to argue your point?

HN is full of people that think they are smart about everything because they have above average knowledge in technology. I can not even start counting the number of uninformed but confident comments I have read here about my non-technology fields.

The problem is these people were told that software was going to eat the world, so they anointed themselves as Certified Experts In Everythingology and think their garbage takes are the word of god.

No I wasn’t taking a jab at HN; It’s more a jab at anyone who thinks “most people are stupid” and excludes themselves from that set of people.

“Average” can demote mode or median, though mean is the most common usage

Yes, it would have been a much better joke if he'd substituted the word "median", which wouldn't have interrupted the flow at all. /s

This guy is (should I say was? ) the best. Love his stuff.

Such an insufferable quote. The vast majority of people aren’t stupid in any sense of the word just because they have different priorities than what the over zealous “smart people” think makes one smart.

It's not just different priorities. The average person will more consistently act against their own self-interests (eg their own priorities) because they simply cannot reason well enough to choose the best path forwards for themselves.

According to whom? In my experience people tend to think they know what’s best for others and call them stupid when they do what they consider best. It’s almost always different priorities with one persons priorities being considered the “obviously best path forward.”

He's so smart George. Simply using the law of averages...

Indeed, and also, same as it ever was. Before the dominance of the internet, television was the dominant structure of media, it is also jam packed full of ads and shitty "click-bait" news. As you allude to, that's just life.

The big difference today is that they're trying the same shit on protocols and platforms that allow you to block anything you want, so it's an arms race between blockers and DRM enforcers. Eventually, they'll just split HTTP into the Web side and the App side. The App side will be encumbered with EME and other anti-standards drafted by WHATWG.

The techno-elites act like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok aren’t at all enjoyable when they have billions of daily active users.

This is the 2020s equivalent of saying that there can’t possibly be legitimate news culture happening with Comedy Central viewers at the peak era of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. It’s just out of touch with the common person.

By the way, Meta products are incredibly good at a UX and technical level. Fast loading, simple UI, and ads have a predictable layout where they don’t bloc site elements or interrupt you (much unlike a typical news website).

and ads have a predictable layout where they don’t bloc site elements or interrupt you

Are we using the same apps? My FB and Insta feeds were a steaming pile of ads and influencers and other garbage. I stopped using both because posts from people I follow were buried

“Updates from friends you know” is what elder millennials think the product is, but that’s not primarily what it is anymore.

I’m talking about the endless stream of content that is the bread and butter of social media. Your friends don’t have infinite content to post.

The endless stream of content product (think Reels and TikTok) is what captures 90% of users’ attention.

In that context, yes, you’ll get ads and influencers shilling sponsored stuff, but you can swipe them away instantly. And my argument is that this product is very good for very many people.

“Ads don’t get in the way”

“Your feed will be mostly ads”

If that’s the way it’s supposed to work, I want none of it. There was a time I could check FB or Insta a few times/week and see mostly friends/family.

:old man yelling at clouds:

Also, elder Millenials. Snort. Gen-Xer here. I’m not even all that gray. Yet.

I guess Elder Millenial is the new Boomer.

Incoming on-brand Gen X comment: it’s funny that they even skip over us when handing out pejoratives.

I couldn't just acknowledge Gen X ;-)

> There was a time I could check FB or Insta a few times/week

I mean, we can obviously see why the above is not a viable product no matter how ethical the company making it may be.

> In that context, yes, you’ll get ads and influencers shilling sponsored stuff, but you can swipe them away instantly.

I'd note that this isn't even good at the UX/technical level.

I very rarely use FB, but opened it the other day and noticed that that the promo card for reels is always showing up despite me having clicked "Hide" on it several times before. I spent a minute or two clicking "Hide" on it probably 20 more times, and as far as I can tell, it has zero effect. Not good UX. Furthermore, if you click "Report this post" in the dialog after "Hide", you get a consistent "Sorry, something went wrong" popup. Not good technically.

It’s not just the “techno-elites”, it is elites of all stripes. I grew up in DC with exactly the sorts of interactions you might imagine, none of those people are techies, and they all have similar anti-social media views.

AFAICT, most of what they really take issue with is intrinsic to allowing direct communication between anyone in the world. There seem to be severely anti-democratic implications for many of the critiques of Meta that I hear.

Truly the only place where the techies seem to diverge is that they care about privacy, whereas it is about “fake news” for everyone else.

Smoking was "enjoyable". Sugar is "enjoyable". Snorting cocaine of a hooker's ass is "enjoyable"

A thing being "enjoyable" doesn't mean it's good, neither for society or the person(s) doing it.

Well, everything's on a spectrum, moderation is key, the dose makes the poison, etc.

Not every moment of life needs to be healthy or productive.

Have you tried using Facebook in a web browser? It's an utter disaster. Scrolling jumps all over the place. Sometimes it just starts loading more content as you scroll, kicks you off of the post you were just reading, then just keeps scrolling around loading the page in an infinite loop. Marketplace is abysmal to try to find things on because the filters are trash, and just shows you shit you weren't searching for. Messenger is slow as fuck in every browser I have tried, and the notifications are totally inconsistent. Fucking errors all the time when I use it.

I dunno to what extent you use Facebook. But it's not technically great at all, and the UX is total trash.

Which non-dumpster news outlets are there? Just about every big name can be counted on to spin in favor of their owners' political aims. Fox News and friends are obvious propaganda. I've not been impressed with CBS, NBC, CNN, WaPo, The New Yorker, all sorts of outlets that I cannot rely on for truthful and relevant news.

I have taken to using a website I found that combines and aggregates all the mainstream news sites, so I can see from an aerial view what -- if any -- message they're trying to sell that day. And it's weird how close in lockstep these media outlets talk about things.

I see a lot of criticism on the Internet amount to "If they only used the good stuff..." So, where is it?

Do you also think it is odd that news consumers would then want to possibly discuss or share the news with people they know?

Because that's the reason. Folks interested in news tend to talk about it with other folks interested - and that has happened long before the internet. In some cases, it is pretty similar to leaving a newspaper in a fast food place: Let folks you don't see much (or at all) read that stuff as well.

It doesn't always matter if other options are better - folks work with what they have. Similar to wanting to talk to someone more intelligent about the news, but still talking about it with the folks you have around.

> news consumers would then want to possibly discuss or share the news with people they know?

I don’t witness that happening though. When I see “news” posted by people on FB, I usually see a despairing one-line intro at most, and a link. Then the comments are a bunch of me-toos or, for those with unkempt friend lists of everyone they’ve ever met, a raucous flame war.

The other “news” is posted by the sites themselves or by large political Pages or Groups. Those are exclusively the “flame war” variety, 1000 strangers screaming into the void pointlessly.

So (imo) nothing of value would be lost by abolishing the whole concept of news on social media.

If you want a place where sane people can have a virtual water cooler discussion about the day’s news stories with friends they know, those friends should just set up a group text or a Discord.

A link to CNN from Facebook is the same as going to CNN. You can replace that with whatever source you think is a non-dumpster option.

Junk food

A lot of boomers still are not comfortable enough with navigating the internet. Apps like Facebook are easier for them.

I'd put a lot of everybody into that category, to be fair to boomers.

Age isn't a reasonable excuse at this point. Common access to the Internet has been with us for ~30 years.

It goes a bit deeper than that. Older people had to actively seek out news. They didn't have to option to go to a service operated by an global corporation that pushed the headlines to them. (Or, as I used to put it to my generation back in the day: grandma invented the computer. We simply use them.)

Have you ever heard of a newspaper?

People subscribed with money to a newspaper. Which then delivered curated content right to their front door. They didn't go seek it out. Also, most of the newspapers are part of global corporations, even local ones.

Heard of them, and you're right about subscriptions to a degree and you're right about corporate ownership to a degree.

I say to a degree vecause there are some distinct differences. At least in my neck of the woods, major newspapers were owned at a national level. Some of the stories came from international corporations (e.g. AP), but what was published tended to be local editorial decisions. You also got the same news as everyone else who subscribed to or purchased single copies of the paper.

Contrast that to online news through social media sites. Chances are the editorial decisions are made in a different country, and there may not even be direct human intervention in choosing what you (as an individual) sees.

Common access to the Internet has been with us for ~30 years.

[deleted stuff about internet rollout at UVA in the mid-90s]

Shit, that was 30 years ago. Thanks for making me feel old. ;)

Unlike subsequent generations, boomers weren’t born with the internet, and they’ve developed habits that fall outside of the internet like reading physical periodicals and subscribing to cable TV that they’ve kept for the past 30 years.

All subsequent generations weren't born with the internet either. I guess it depends on your definition of the internet, but ARPAnet didn't start using TCP/IP until the 1980's.

That may hold water for some of Gen X, but it was still a key part of many of their formative years. Many Millennials literally grew up with it.

To be clear, I'm not saying that boomers aren't smart enough to use technology. It's just that old, comfortable habits are hard to break. Facebook for many of them is a safe, walled garden compared to the wild west internet.

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