Why I'm skeptical of Ground News | Hacker News Reader

Why I'm skeptical of Ground News

sjodle.com

> This leads the platform to publish dodgy stories from the right, with the appearance that they are just as valid as high-fact reporting from the left or the center.

Sadly, this is downstream of mainstream news itself. I think if Ground News attempted to truly solve this problem, the right would condemn Ground News as "fake news" or controlled by Soros like they do Wikipedia.

I'm looking to be skeptical of Ground News, because almost all YouTube sponsors are scams, and we remember Honey was recently exposed as a scam, but this isn't enough to convince me.

Honey, Established Titles, BetterHelp, 7CupsofTea, RAID Shadow Legends, FTX, OperaGX, AG1, Factor, HelloFresh, AirUp. How many am I missing? How much more do we need to see to be convinced?

I won’t use Ground News or Brilliant (I tried it in 2019 and was unimpressed) because they market so aggressively, something doesn’t smell right!

NordVPN, they're the most aggressive.

Is it a good product? Genuine question

Works ok. Friend shared their account. Proven useful few times.

Their app wants persistence and they had sister who sells residential proxies, if you catch my drift.

I'd sooner setup an AWS micro instance with wireguard than use some VPN that might well be logging everything and selling it to data brokers and/or sharing with domestic/foreign intelligence services.

TBH good luck doing anything with it, you'll be blocked everywhere.

But yeah I agree. You have to trust someone, somewhere. Adding layers helps tho.

Are you suggesting IP/BGP discrimination against AWS subnets? So what's the alternative, a random, cheap VPS in (country of choice)?

There's also ExpressVPN

Don't forget Incogni, I was tempted to subscribe but as you point out, when you see the other kind of services/products youtubers tend to peddle, it gives me pause.

They’re never services that the YouTuber vets.

Look at its owners. You have good reason to be skeptical about incogni.

All data broker "removal services" are scams.

To be a bit pedantic, I think that YouTube sponsors aren't necessarily scams, but are definitely not generally good products or deals. It's a spectrum.

Ground News makes all news be about left versus right. It teaches its users to approach everything as a political battle.

We have enough "left-leaning skeptics" and "right-leaning skeptics", even some "neutral skeptics", but barely any skeptics.

The word "skeptic" is poisoned by I will continue to use it. That's intentional.

this NYT opinion piece from a few years back was impactful to my understanding about the destructive nature of such a false dichotomy - as it pertains to Lebanon

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/09/opinion/trump-beirut-poli...

Essentially that in a state of sectarian politics, everything is political.

> ..."During the course of the dinner, someone mentioned the unusual hailstorms that had pelted Beirut the previous two nights. Everyone offered an explanation for this extreme weather event, before Malcolm, tongue in cheek, asked his guests, “Do you think the Syrians did it?”...

Skepticism is definitely quite Lindy..

That said, having it as the main tool in the toolbox* is...

Something to be skeptical about?

*Bundled up with another in-your-face one like "personal experience", this also screams "political".. and thus hard to take seriously (particularly when those personal experiences are actually relevant)

Freshness- whatever. You probably already know fresh is somewhat popular, but are you really sure you want to be right but not loved? Be respected by your (fr)enemies maybe? Not even that?

(I'm certainly skeptical about "loved for being right" :)

What are you talking about?

Get your arguments together, c'mon. I expect more.

That was no argument. Those were observations ;)

That's exausting. "It's not X, it's Y". Dictionary definition claims.

Can't you grasp meaning? Even LLMs can.

> because almost all YouTube sponsors are scams

Anything advertising on youtube or podcasts is a negative indicator for me as these platforms have followed the path of talk radio in having a very high ratio of the products that advertise on them being dodgy if not outright scams.

I'm sure there are exceptions that are totally fine, but the pattern follows often enough that if I don't have a pre-existing relationship with a brand before seeing/hearing a youtube or podcast ad for it, it goes into the scam bucket in my head just through the negative advertising platform connection.

I saw something a while back about how to start a watch company. Essentially source some junk, use highly targeted social media ads to look like a real brand, then profit.

https://imgur.com/a/how-to-create-unique-successful-minimali...

The damage is already done, the American Overton Window was successfully shifted right by that brand of ideology with relentless xenophobia and provincial nativism that began with ex-Nixon administration affiliates and also AM proto-hate radio like Paul Harvey. Furthermore, both the mainstream political left and right have been coopted and corrupted by big money, what Gore Vidal called the Property party. Equivocal bothsidesism between center-left and far-right is disinformational malpractice with gerrymandered goalposts.

Plus, advertising on every Youtube channel makes me suspicious.

>The data collected here shows that left-leaning stories tend to have far better sourcing than right-leaning ones

In the same breath, he quotes an article about it dousing Newfoundland in microplastics; a broad sweeping conclusion from a laughably flawed study method for the given results. And to be fair, this isn't a diss on the student's effort: scientific study is the holy grail. However, that headline and what was actually done represent two incredibly different things.

So in actuality, perhaps he's just calling his own biases out: The Left leaning articles published in Ground News often attempt to invent consensus by quoting one-off studies. Perhaps his own desire "to be right" or social pressure "to be on the forefront of knowledge" fans the thirst for early conclusions.

Starting with an actual study is a gigantic improvement compared to the "we quote a random person's conspiracy theory as fact" style of journalism.

Is a dodgy study that "establishes" a preconceived idea really all that much better than a random person's conspiracy theory?

Literally yes, we can read the study's hypothesis, its experiments, the data it collects and then actually evaluate it on the merits. Conspiracy theories are unfalsifiable.

Fair enough. They're better in that way. But they are no better at actually supplying us with knowledge or evidence, though they claim to. So in that way, they might be worse.

IMO, a bad study requires a lot more effort and expertise to dismiss than a conspiracy theory. Most people, not even paid experts, don't have that time. They're more liable to accept a bad but fashionable study than an easily debunked fantasy like Pizzagate.

Hidden poison is worse than obvious manure.

Similarly, the author's "Truth" sections are rather glib and misleading. Each one could be its own article and analysis, i.e., a proper fact-check, but he seems to have rushed to the conclusions.

Am I missing something? Seems the problem is with dodgy, poorly sourced journalism, not Ground News who seem to be doing what they can.

I think there is a false sense of everything being left v right. Perhaps there could be a few more spectrums on there e.g environmental, fiscal, social?

The issue is that ground news presents the dodgy journalism as being equally valid.

I think the only way to approach this is to have a panel of credible people for each beat (maybe from academia) who can qualitatively asses a range of articles and curate a spectrum of articles.

However this is all scooting around the fundamental problem that we are all individually responsible for critical thinking - ideally developed through primary and secondary education.

Getting dangerously close to inventing editors w that idea, no good we tried that already :)

Hahaha you're totally right

It's the downfall of having zero accountability, infinite reach, and anyone can become a "citizen journalist" without credible, less biased, subject matter experts curating things as a final, fact-checking arbiter.

I see where the author is coming from. The author's main gripe is that non-factual right-wing stories are being presented as left-wing blindspots. The author would seemingly prefer that those stories be flagged as being untrustworthy due to low factuality scores among its sources. Understandable but I think it defeats the purpose of Ground News.

I think the idea is that if you are seeking the truth, and Ground News shows you a story that's being covered exclusively by right or left wing sources, that's their signal that the story could be either a) bullshit, or b) something one side is conveniently ignoring because it runs counter to their agenda. Ultimately it's up to you to you to decide. But, this way, if you hear this story being talked about elsewhere, you've now encountered it and know that it's being almost exclusively covered by one side.

> Ground News shows you a story that's being covered exclusively by right or left wing sources, that's their signal that the story could be either a) bullshit,

Except this isn't what this guy found. What he found was that right-wing-only stories were invariably lies.

You'd have a point if there was also the same tendency to lying on "the left" (whoever that is supposed to be). Just because you can come up with two sides to an issue doesn't make them equally valid.

There is a truly massive amount of people attempting to prevent criticism of right wing people by constantly deflecting everything with "oh the left wing is just as bad!" and there's an annoying type of person who sees that and believes it.

Like, lies and propaganda are bad for us and our society but we can't get anywhere talking about if everyone has to constantly pretend there are two sides to it.

Read what I wrote again please. You didn't understand it the first time.

Most of the examples this article cites are ones that exclude any coverage from left-leaning sources—and these are often highly biased articles, frequently lacking in merit. Even with tools like Ground News, media literacy is still essential; you can’t just throw it out the window. From my perspective, it offers a much broader view than simply sticking to one or two news outlets—especially ones you'd normally avoid at all costs (which, to me, is the whole point of the Blindspot feature). While it does provide some historical data, media ownership information, and other insights depending on your subscription level, ultimately it's up to the reader to decide whether the coverage is legitimate.

Just to add to my earlier point: Ground News is not a fact-checking service, nor does it claim to be one. While it does provide factual data about media sources, that information is aggregated from multiple third-party evaluators, as stated on its information page. It doesn’t verify the truth of individual news reports—it simply shows how a story was covered.

Naturally, this means the platform includes misinformation, political spin, and propaganda—because it’s not designed to tell you whether a story is true. As for the Blindspot feature, it may flag sources with a history of low factual reporting, but ultimately, it’s still up to you to decide how trustworthy any given coverage is.

I often see this defence of, "it's up to the reader to decide!" pop up in circumstances like this.

The vast majority of the time it's used to justify either lying or repeating lies.

What exactly is the use of a website apparently designed to give equal weight to lies and facts? How does that benefit anyone?

The world doesn't need yet another journalism-related resource that repeats what other people say instead of attempting to actually find the truth. But doing the former is massively cheaper and easier than the latter.

Perhaps it’s most useful as a way to avoid getting trapped in a filter bubble. If you prefer to stay within the comfort zone of your favorite news outlet, there’s nothing stopping you—and in that case, you probably won’t get much value from services like Ground News.

Personally, I find it helpful to see what people outside my usual information sphere are being exposed to—not just to understand why others may think the way they do, but also to better recognize how that contrast influences the coverage I choose to consume.

That first stacked bar chart appears to have "left" and "right" mixed up, if the analysis just below it is correct. Not confidence-inspiring, and hasn't been corrected in 18 months since the post was published...

The analysis seems to disagree with the data shown in the graphs about the labels of "left" and "right". The author seems to be confusing left/right? It's not just the first stacked bar, but also the third (avg %bias)

I think what you’re seeing is a confusion coming from ground news own terms. They call something a “left wing blind spot” when it’s a story that does not appear in left-wing sources, meaning that it only appears in right wing sources. The blog copies that terminology here, but it can lead to some confusion.

Tried but can't say I particularly liked it. The axis they're splitting things on is very US centric Democrat vs Rep...which just isn't all that useful to me.

Summary: Ground.news puts far too much faith in the legitimacy of many right-wing headlines; giving them front-page views as "blindspots". Meaning: Even though the story itself is complete BS/non-factual, the algorithm shows it as a legitimate thing that isn't being covered by left-leaning or centrist news.

To fix this, Ground.news should update their algorithm to perform much more scrutiny for headlines trending on right-leaning sites. Especially considering that nearly all their right-leaning sources have very low or basically non-existent factuality ratings.

...or just remove (entirely) any "news" source that doesn't have a high factuality rating. That would be the most logical choice but I do sympathize with the fact that would remove nearly all right-leaning "news" sites.

If I were in charge I'd reorient the leanings so that sources like NPR would not show up as "left-leaning" but as centrist (i.e. a more European alignment which is more historically accurate/real, IMHO). Which is where they actually sit (in reality). Sites like Breitbart would be discarded entirely as failing tests of factuality.

> If I were in charge I'd reorient the leanings so that sources like NPR would not show up as "left-leaning" but as centrist (i.e. a more European alignment which is more historically accurate/real, IMHO

It is not historically accurate. The terms left and right come from the French Revolution.

Those on the right supported a strong monarchy, those in a center supported a weak monarchy with a republic, and those on the left supported a republic and no monarchy.

Pretty much every news media, regardless if they are now considered "right wing", would meet the definition of left wing historically.

Yes, these things mutate over time. Their historical roots are interesting but have no bearing on their common usage today. A similar story for those who claim left-wing politicians in the USA are really "European centrists" -- possibly true, but pedantic and irrelevant in the context of American left-right discussions.

> Yes, these things mutate over time. Their historical roots are interesting but have no bearing on their common usage today.

I agree. I was just commenting on how the historical understanding is not more accurate for today's understanding and how his definition of historical was quite modern still.

> A similar story for those who claim left-wing politicians in the USA are really "European centrists" -- possibly true, but pedantic and irrelevant in the context of American left-right discussions.

I also agree, but I think that it is hard to know what politicians actually believe. I'm sure there are a number of communists in congress, they just aren't open about it and support more moderate legislation to not look radical. For all we know many of the left wing US politicians are further left than European ones.

Just looking at what they say and vote is not true to their beliefs.

I feel like the whole concept of "left/right", when applied to news reporting especially, just makes the "false balance" issue impossible to deal with.

We don't have "right leaning facts", we either have facts or we don't.

And yes, omitting facts or focusing on others can certainly influence people, but we aren't even at that point any more, we have lies being positioned as equally valid "other side" arguments.

I believe the main purpose of Ground News—especially the Blindspot feature—is to highlight what the "other side" is reading, rather than to lend legitimacy to the reported content. I still find that information valuable, but perhaps that distinction could have been made more explicit.

I don't know what to do with that information. "The other side believes absurd new thing" is subsumed by "The other side continuously believes absurd new things", which I already knew -- and already knew that I could not alter that.

It’s really about understanding the broader spectrum. You could assume that what you’re reading is the whole picture—but it’s still useful to see how the existence of these so-called “absurd things” influences and shapes the narratives within the media you do choose to consume.

Sources should really be evaluated on a multi-dimensional axis:

- Factuality (low -> high)

- Partisanship (low -> high)

- Political orientation: social issues (left -> right)

- Political orientation: economic issues (left -> right)

- Political orientation: foreign policy (left -> right)

etc.

Sources like NPR are decisively not centrist w.r.t social issues and partisanship. There has been a distinct change in their reporting over the last ~decade.

(also, I'm aware the left-right scale is very lacking. Economics itself has so many dimensions that left/right is meaningless there.)

It'd be nice, but I can't see it being effective at changing broad consumer behavior. Giving people more information to make a choice doesn't do much value when they're already making poor choices based on the already existing information.

Put another way, I wish we had the nuanced shit to sift through where some nice multi-dimensional analysis could save the day. But the issue is people are consuming shit that is demonstrably shit from the first whiff/taste. I can't see how having some pretty vectors to showing them where their shit lives in shitspace is going to be helpful.

I don't think anyone could (or even necessarily should) design a service like this for the masses. (Designing anything with the masses in mind is probably a way to end up with a mediocre product regardless, but I digress.) This would be more for people like us and the typical HN crowd: interested in truth and nuance for the sake of knowing the world accurately.

The problem with people consuming low-information, rage-baiting, distorted, highly-partisan slop masquerading as news is a problem I don't have the first idea on solving. The issue isn't even with the existence of the shit itself: that sort of content has always and will always exist, regardless. The issue is with (i) the volume of people consuming and accepting it, and more importantly, (ii) how much influence that garbage has on the national discourse and policy. For example, Musk consumes that sort of content and then feeds it into Grok (hello, MechaHitler), which then propagates to elected officials and the electorate and has real-world consequences in policy.

News site/app that I’d like to see:

Track major new sites over time and build a portal that lets you see the front page news with some time delay (1 month, 3 month, 1 year) and annotate each story with “what happened since then?”

Too often big stories get ignored and forgotten. Or baseless fearmongering and speculation never confronts the fact it didn’t come true. I think we’d all benefit from this ability to step back from the rapid news cycle and see a bigger picture.

Left leaning author is of the opinion that left-leaning stories tend to have far better sourcing than right-leaning ones, and are less politically polarized. News at 11.

Both sides aren't the same. The right is much better at propaganda.

The right is better at propaganda, collaboration, distribution, advertising, investing, fundraising, outreach, and monetization.

Thom Hartmann laments regularly that FreeSpeechTV is a close to a progressive network as there is. Meanwhile, he alleges a conservative media owner offered him multiple millions to change his tune in exchange for distribution, support, and marketing. Yes, he also took advantage of the RT America network while it existed to gain visibility but he maintains he was never censored or told to read "must-air" Kremlin propaganda copy.

I think it's more accurate that the right is better aligned with the interests of capital, and capitalists control all of those things and have the levers of government biased in their favor.

The left has always had to fight an uphill battle politically and culturally and financially, which is why they've been at their most successful when working outside of system versus trying to work within it.

No, there is no "the left" uniform hivemind but there are many factions. The neoliberal spectrum is very much aligned with capital to where they almost mirror Republicans; that was Clinton's original sin. The Abundance neo-neoliberals are the latest incarnation of them.

The progressive spectrum rarely wants to cooperate or coordinate and is often too preciously-pure rather than pragmatic to learn about business to succeed.

Dragging the Overton Window back left won't magically happen with Che Guevara T-shirts, People's Front of Judea vs. the Judean People's Front, or pure ideals "too perfect" to be tainted by making a venture out of it.

Isn't this a contradictory statement, as 'better' propaganda would entail you don't perceive it as propaganda?

I think right leaning (in a traditional definition) sort of undersells the current right wing media/political sphere. Its difficult to evaluate the credibility of a movement that is fundamentally, albeit inconsistently anti-institution, anti-intellectual/ anti-education, and believes that coercion is a valid path for the homogenization of a national culture.

Credible news isn't left leaning as much as it is the leftovers of anyone who doesn't belong to a group that is fundamentally disinterested in an objective view. Credible news is only left leaning to the extent that anyone who doesn't fall into the far right wing spectrum is left leaning. Sort of a false dichotomy.

They're anti-institution because they think institutions have been corrupted by the left - they trust their own institutions. Intellectualism has been corrupted by leftism/communism/feminism/secularism what have you, but they have their own intellectuals. Education is indoctrinating the youth with degenerate ideology and communist propaganda, but they trust schools that hew to their narrative. "Coercion being a valid path for the homogenization of a national culture" is soft selling some very obvious and common right-wing historical policies. IMHO This particular iteration of the right differs from tradition in its self-awareness and chaotic nature, but not in its essential core ideals. It just suffers from the same post-COVID post social media brain rot as everyone else.

As far as credibility goes, I think they're as credible as they've ever been. How credible that is is left as an exercise to the reader.

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