Hacker News Reader

Comment by antifa | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

View on HN

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.

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.

> 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...

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.

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com