[HN Gopher] 7% of Americans don't use the internet. Who are they?
___________________________________________________________________
7% of Americans don't use the internet. Who are they?
Author : ipsocannibal
Score : 317 points
Date : 2021-04-07 00:55 UTC (22 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.pewresearch.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.pewresearch.org)
| doe88 wrote:
| Nowadays, at least in the country I live, if you don't have
| someone in your family able to complete some tasks for you on the
| internet i'm not sure it would be possible to not have a modicus
| of internet access. I also think this is even worse than that, I
| would add that it becomes very difficult to not have a kind of
| smartphone with a way to install current apps, more and more some
| services are available only through apps.
| _rpd wrote:
| tl;dr: Internet non-adoption is linked to a number of demographic
| variables, but is strongly connected to age - with older
| Americans continuing to be one of the least likely groups to use
| the internet. Today, 25% of adults ages 65 and older report never
| going online.
| gremlinsinc wrote:
| Do they have a smart phone and realize that every app is
| online?
|
| That face time is online?
|
| This study seems flawed if it didn't get very specific because
| there's not a small number of tech illiterate ppl who don't
| even realize they're online when they are....
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| None of my aging relatives have a smart phone, my parents
| struggle with a dumb mobile phone.
| JamesAdir wrote:
| This was also my thought. I find it hard to believe that 65+
| years old don't use navigation on their phone when driving,
| or googling even basic information.
| kube-system wrote:
| Is it a coincidence that 25% is also in the same ballpark
| as the percent of people 65+ that don't have a drivers
| license?
|
| But besides that, someone who got their license before 1972
| would have spent almost 3/4 of their life driving without
| GPS.
| erik_seaberg wrote:
| Mom has seen GPS nav on my phone, but she's too frugal to
| let me get her one. She has a feature phone that's only on
| when she leaves home.
|
| I got her a cheap laptop and she does have cable internet
| (and knows the difference between being online and having
| an outage), so she's pretty much where I was in 2005 when
| 3G was almost unusable. I can imagine her getting by
| without them, just like they did in 1990.
| kube-system wrote:
| Don't read "65+" as "65".
|
| The 65+ category also includes everyone 80+, for example.
| There's plenty of old people still alive who have trouble
| with operating technology a lot more simple than a cell
| phone.
| kilroy123 wrote:
| I have several very elderly relatives and many of them never
| use a computer or internet. So I'm not too surprised by this.
|
| However, my grandpa is 93 and uses his iPad, goes on Facebook,
| and watches YouTube all day. So it's definitely not all of
| them.
| misiti3780 wrote:
| I am currently staying with my parents in upstate NY, and we do
| not have high speed internet. I am able to tether on my phone,
| but we obviously cannot stream netflix etc.
|
| It really is a weird world not being hooked up to the grid.
| syl_sau wrote:
| While I'd love to use the internet less, it has become clear to
| me, over the years, that it's an essential tool in pursuing
| relationship with people in their twenties. For better or worse,
| a lot of the social experience has been outsourced to the virtual
| networks: from organizing parties to sharing ideas to a friend to
| having fun together (nowadays done with online games), we seem to
| be less and less able to verbally formalize the things our
| ancestors were naturally good at (you'd call this "social
| intelligence").
|
| It's not even that it's relevant to use it, it's just that people
| forget about you if you don't. Loneliness is a real huge problem
| among the youth -- without the internet it'd be unbearable.
| kjakm wrote:
| >> Loneliness is a real huge problem among the youth -- without
| the internet it'd be unbearable.
|
| How much of that loneliness problem is caused by the internet
| we think is helping it? Take it away and people have to start
| interacting again. Without the endless streams of entertainment
| we have to sit in rooms together chatting or we'd go mad.
| dalbasal wrote:
| Investigating the "last holdouts" for anything is usually
| interesting. "The last 7%" is a heterodox group by definition.
|
| That said, I don't think the way this data is presented tells us
| much about who they are. It just tells us how many they are
| (spoiler: few) within each demographic group.
|
| Besides being backwards, I'd also posture that sampling and
| surveying a "last 7%" would be very hard. Things get quirky at
| the tail.
| splithalf wrote:
| People rationalize with "I don't look at the bad parts" and "I
| can quit anytime I choose, I just choose not to right now."
| People don't see that they're addicted to something that is
| destroying all that is good. Using Facebook or Twitter on a
| regular basis is bad, in some cases it turns lethal. Even worse
| is functional addiction, where it warps you slowly over the
| years, too gradually to notice. We regulate big pharma, we should
| do the same with big tech companies that are built around
| manipulating human minds (google, Facebook, Twitter). They used
| to put cocaine in Coca Cola. We are at that point with tech
| products. Coca Cola business model seems far more ethical, and
| they cause diabetes.
| Smithalicious wrote:
| This sounds suspiciously like "websites I use good, websites I
| don't use bad"
|
| Disclaimer: never did get into Twitter and Facebook though I
| periodically give Twitter another try every half year or so
| splithalf wrote:
| No I think when you get into the business of doing even very
| innocent things like ab testing you are doing human subject
| research and should be bound by the same standards as have
| been the tradition in the social sciences. We don't allow
| pharma companies to try out fun new addictive pills that
| serve no purpose beyond profit. That's unethical. Why do we
| exclude the brain from our realm of health concern? Why do we
| care more about our bodies than our brains? Dollarinos.
| rhino369 wrote:
| Absolutely many people are addicted to social media.
|
| But many more people aren't. I'm able to use facebook and
| twitter moderately, but regularly (less than 10 minutes a day
| on average, never any more than 20 minutes in one day).
|
| That said, I think its possible to create social media that
| works 100% for me without being so addiction forming in other
| people.
| [deleted]
| nonameiguess wrote:
| My dad doesn't use the Internet. Not on principle or anything,
| but he grew up without it, has friends but meets them in person
| or talks on the phone, same as he has for the past 40 years. He's
| retired now, but never needed it working as a skilled tradesman
| with a county job. In retirement, he still builds stuff, but
| physical stuff. No need for Internet.
|
| My ex-wife's mom also didn't use the Internet, but she was a
| schizophrenic who believed the FBI was following her around her
| entire life and has spent much of the past 40 years
| institutionalized.
|
| So those are at least two very different types of people, and
| that's just people living in big cities. I'm sure there are still
| a fair number of rural people who couldn't make much use of the
| Internet even if they wanted to.
|
| Another ex of mine grew up on a farm in Amish country. Not Amish,
| but all the neighbors were. They didn't use Internet.
| coldcode wrote:
| My mom grew up in Nazi Germany and never went to college. Yet
| for the last decade of her life she used email and web every
| day (iMac and then Mac mini) to explore the world (and
| sometimes actually go there). She didn't need the internet at
| all, but embraced it anyway. Age is not an obstacle to new
| things, but attitude is. My uncle and aunt had multiple devices
| for their entire 80-90 decade of life, until he passed away and
| she developed too many health issues.
|
| Yet my cousin(s) in a small town in Germany rarely use email or
| internet at all (which I think is not unusual there) as
| everything they need is available locally.
|
| I've spent my whole adult life using computers and writing
| software - I still routinely help people in younger generations
| explaining things that baffle them. People still have a limited
| understanding of how the internet works.
| axaxs wrote:
| Same with mine. And I'll be damned, he seems to get by just
| fine with letters and phone calls, probably with even less
| hassle than I have using only the internet and avoiding phone
| calls.
| Forge36 wrote:
| My grandfather doesn't "use the internet", my grandmother uses
| email (not sure what else). They do watch Netflix now via roku
| (they used to have a blockbuster subscription so they could go
| and pickup DVDs). Is that the internet?
| auiya wrote:
| If they're using an ISP for anything, yes. That's the
| Internet.
| hooande wrote:
| It's surprising how many people here equate "the Internet" with
| "social media". It's like having access to 1,000,000 x the
| Library of Alexandria every day and only being interested in
| keeping up with what people are talking about in the lobby
| dalbasal wrote:
| Well... I assume that most Alexandrians weren't to be found in
| the library, at any given moment in time.
|
| In any case, a smartphone with social media (fb even) was the
| entry point to personal computing for most people on earth.
| They entered through the lobby, I guess.
| psyc wrote:
| Heck, I bristle as it is when people equate the internet with
| the web!
| [deleted]
| INTPenis wrote:
| Exactly, that's how it is. The library has never been a
| happening spot. The happening kids, if forced to the library by
| an authority figure, would just spend the time whispering,
| gossiping, and playing around with their friends.
|
| I bet you were one of those nerds who actually USED the
| library. :D I was too.
| fulafel wrote:
| Yep, shifting the terms reframes the issues. Even library of
| alexandria sounds a bit biased toward the web and similar
| things. The fundamental thing is the decentralized packet
| switched network that lets any node talk to any other node
| where anyone can build new applications on it.
|
| (But sadly a lot of people aren't directly on the internet
| anymore, and have only indirect access via a IPv4 NAPT
| gateway).
| shartshooter wrote:
| "People don't want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a
| quarter-inch hole"
| Dirlewanger wrote:
| Because that's all the majority of the population knows. Their
| Internet _is_ social media.
| Roritharr wrote:
| A friend of mine, working for an ISP mapping the regions where
| there is still only dial-up access, is referring to these people
| jokingly now as "the lucky ones with intact brains".
| jasonjei wrote:
| Let's suppose they call a customer service desk that uses
| Internet tools to help them--or they've paid for a transaction on
| Square. Have they technically indirectly been a beneficiary of
| the Internet? Does that count as using it?
| throwaway1777 wrote:
| I don't think that counts. It's like calling someone a driver
| when they've only been a passenger.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| Yeah, but they have been _using_ a car. Not as driver, but as
| a way to get from A to B
| boring_twenties wrote:
| A more apt comparison would be someone who _doesn 't_ use a
| car as a way to get from A to B, but still receives for
| instance mail delivery by motorized vehicle. Even if they
| wanted to opt out of that for some ideological reason, it's
| simply not an option.
| hansvm wrote:
| Yes, but the fact that both the driver and the passenger
| have used the car is a specific fact relating to that
| instance which doesn't generalize to all transitivity
| relations -- it's still possible for John to ask Karn to do
| something which uses the internet and for John to not have
| used the internet.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| Probably not, because if you count indirect uses, the rate goes
| to practically zero. The internet is deeply embedded in, for
| example, all of the infrastructure we use. Or your doctor will
| probably use the internet to look up symptoms and medications.
| So if they have any connection to society at all, you can say
| they indirectly benefited from the internet.
|
| Technically, the few isolated island tribes might count as not
| benefiting from the internet.
| exegete wrote:
| No, not for this. It's a survey with a specific question asking
| if they use the internet, and here in this context "use"
| undoubtedly means "access directly" and not "indirectly benefit
| from".
| tyingq wrote:
| They didn't mention religion. I would guess that's also a factor,
| at least for some of the older Mennonites, Amish, Hasidic Jews,
| etc.
| tgflynn wrote:
| I would have guessed the figure was closer to 20 %, which it was
| around 2010, so I guess I'm 10 years out of date.
|
| I wonder how the survey was conducted. Is it possible that people
| who don't use the internet are also difficult to reach in other
| ways ?
| [deleted]
| kube-system wrote:
| Going purely off of anecdotal data, anyone that I've known over
| the past 10 years who didn't use the internet also had limited
| use of other forms of communication.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| I can imagine not using it much after I retire. Honestly it
| doesn't offer a whole lot IMO. I'll likely keep email and use
| maps/navigation though, as they are useful.
| noisy_boy wrote:
| I imagine I'll use it just as much, if not more, after
| retirement. My wish is to work on open source/community
| projects then so I'll probably collaborate more, albeit in my
| own time/pace.
| hehetrthrthrjn wrote:
| You assume you'll have a choice.
| peter303 wrote:
| Hades, my internet usage jumped to 250 GB a month since covid.
| (My Comcast account allows 1200 GB) I am a FIRE'd former
| college professor and now have endless access to academic
| zoominars and professional conferences. I'll be somewhat
| disappointed when much of that returns to lower capacity in-
| person in 2022.
| ghaff wrote:
| For commercial conferences at least, there's a general belief
| that events will continue in a hybrid way. That said, I
| expect that conferences that just went free when they went
| virtual will start charging again; many have tacked on at
| least nominal fees already. (Some are even more.)
|
| While, I haven't been wild about online conferences in
| general, it has let me dip into events I couldn't normally
| justify attending.
| nicbou wrote:
| During COVID, my usage pattern is directly correlated to the
| weather. When it's raining, there are very few alternatives
| to sitting on the computer.
| barbazoo wrote:
| I'm not saying I could do it, but it's certainly a dream.
| m80N wrote:
| https://www.baidu.com
| major505 wrote:
| they are happy. This is what they are.
| throwaway189262 wrote:
| Very old people. There you go.
|
| Going to school or even having relationships with people under 40
| is impossible without the internet.
| hehetrthrthrjn wrote:
| Roughly speaking: it's the old, the poor, the uneducated, and the
| rural.
|
| That's not terribly surprising.
| drdeadringer wrote:
| And the "in prison".
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| But the 50-year-old high-school educated homeless man I talk to
| several times a week is totally plugged in. Youtube for camping
| and workout videos; current on movies and music. Knows all the
| hotspots around town. If he isn't exercising or foraging, he's
| watching something on his phone or pad.
| protomyth wrote:
| I'm betting a lot of rural folks have better internet than
| those in Silicon Valley. Given I live and work among the poor,
| rural, and forgotten and the internet (Facebook, Netflix) is
| being used all the time, I doubt the geography aspect.
|
| I do want to see this studies raw questions/ data gathering.
| mywittyname wrote:
| So, I have lots of family that live in rural areas. Rural
| being defined as can't see the neighbor's house + unpaved
| roads off of roads named with only three numbers (ie, take
| 765 to 321, turn left on 997, keep an eye out for the fence
| on the left) + no sewage + 1+hr commutes to Walmart or Dollar
| General.
|
| Their internet availability is satellite. They have phone
| lines, but are too far out for DSL. Some have cable, so they
| can get like 3mb for $80/mo or something. I can get edge
| service on my cell sometimes, but it's basically unusable.
|
| You're probably thinking more of the exurbs. Houses with like
| 1-5 acres of land off of a county highway or something.
| neallindsay wrote:
| There are definitely rural areas that have excellent internet
| service available. I grew up in a small town that happened to
| be a test market for Time Warner cable internet (RoadRunner)
| when it came out in the 1990s.
|
| However, there's rural and there's _rural_. Some people live
| places where the cable company would have to run miles of
| copper _just to service a single house_. If you 're living so
| far out and also poor, you probably can't afford to tether to
| your cell phone either.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| That's not true, urban and suburban are about half combined vs.
| rural. That's _way_ less skewed rural than I would have
| expected.
| chii wrote:
| Being poor has the highest chance of you not using the
| internet, compared to the other factors.
| frankydp wrote:
| Just to add that most retired/old people are also "poor" when
| it comes to income. Especially folks with only social security.
| It is no coincidence that those two groups(65+/-$30K) are the
| biggest.
|
| Almost all of the stats in the study reflect the composition of
| the 65+ US population.
| LoLFactor wrote:
| It's funny how so many people came here to complain about the
| state of the internet... on the internet. Maybe it's just me and
| I don't get it, but if you don't want to be on the internet
| anymore, just yank the ethernet cable out of your computer and
| cancel your plan. One less bill to pay, right?
|
| Coming here to complain and not seeing the ridiculousness in it
| makes me think some of the people in this thread need to take a
| long look at themselves and ponder if they might, in fact, be
| part of a certain cohort that actually makes the internet a worse
| place to be.
|
| Just my two cents. Feel free to downvote.
| re-actor wrote:
| For most people here, getting rid of the internet would also
| mean changing careers to one of the few remaining things you
| can do professionally without using the internet.
|
| "You criticize thing yet you also use it, how curious" is such
| a banal take it's literally a meme.
| LoLFactor wrote:
| My apologies for the banality. The completely obvious truth
| that internet is a necessity in 2021 somehow escaped me... Or
| maybe it didn't and that was the whole point.
|
| Given that these people are here, they are obviously engaging
| in internet usage that IS NOT part of their job (I've yet to
| see a job posting where reading HN is a requirement). Nobody
| is pushing anybody to use certain parts of the internet.
| Don't like some parts? Don't use them. Don't like any parts
| of it? Then yeah, yank the cable out and enjoy... or endure,
| whatever the case may be. Be it career or anything else
| that's stopping you from yanking the cable, well then... it
| might be that the internet isn't that bad. Not as bad as
| losing your job, anyway, so WHY COMPLAIN?
|
| Using the internet strictly for utilitarian purposes is
| possible. Do that and then use the rest of your time to go
| out with your buddies. Don't have any? That might just be
| because (and this was my second point) you're a negative and
| possibly toxic person. The kind people don't want to be
| around and that MAKE THE INTERNET A LESS APPEALING PLACE.
|
| Did I adequately rephrase my take to be less banal?
| re-actor wrote:
| Thanks your position is much more clear to me now.
|
| Why the aversion to complaining? Sometimes things are bad
| and need changing, and sometimes all you can do is
| complain. There's a certain alure to saying "don't like it
| don't use it" and that being the end of it, but at the same
| time it doesn't acknowledge the fact that these concerns
| might be legitimate, and sure, something else can always be
| worse, but that doesn't really address the issues at hand.
|
| The alternative to what the internet is now isn't no
| internet, change for the better is possible.
|
| There are real structural issues with how the internet is
| de facto to most people, these are issues of power,
| governance and capital, turning your back on them doesn't
| make them go away. I understand why people can feel immense
| frustration at the current state of the internet (and
| perhaps the world in general) without making the drastic
| step to restructure their life around avoiding a utility
| most of the world runs on.
| LoLFactor wrote:
| I have a theory and why the internet is the way it is.
| It's because it's mainstream. It used to be "better" (as
| some would put it) because it was niche. Only the
| passionate and the interested were on it. Nowadays
| everybody and their grandma is on a social network...
| literally. Stands to reason the space would "devolve".
| Why? Because of what Carlin once said (paraphrasing):
| Imagine how stupid the average person is. Now realize
| half of the world is even dumber than that.
|
| Most of the complaints here were basically about human
| behavior on the internet. If it were complaints about
| actual technical problems or engineering problems related
| to the internet, I'd get it. I mean, you could argue that
| Facebook being a walled garden is actually a structural
| problem of the internet, but really, it isn't. The
| internet hasn't fundamentally technically changed. You
| can reach content outside of those silos if you want and
| search for it (i.e. you're actually interested), but
| guess what? People don't want to leave that walled
| garden. They want stupid videos, recycled quotes and
| propaganda. Propaganda is soothing. Searching outside of
| your silo would run you the risk of finding conflicting
| opinions, or God forbid, conflicting evidence.
|
| The internet is "worse" today then it was some years ago
| because more and more dumb, ignorant and uninterested
| people are on it. Which is to say the internet now more
| resembles the real world then it did long ago, when it
| more resembled a (somewhat) private club for more
| interested and passionate, educated people.
|
| The way I see it, the world has always been full of dumb
| people who screw it up for everyone. The internet just
| makes it much easier to see.
|
| So I don't have an aversion. I understand the frustration
| as well, I just find complaining about it risible. Given
| that complaining identifies the problem and nudges people
| towards a solution, how do you cure mediocrity and
| stupidity?
|
| P.S. When you have a chance, check out "The basic laws of
| human stupidity" by Carlo M. Cipolla. It's a 15 minute
| read and well worth it. You'll get a better understanding
| of where I come from.
| CivBase wrote:
| I assume the complaints about "the internet" are mostly
| referring to the parts of the web people interact with most
| frequently, which would definitely not include HN comments.
| facebook.com alone probably serves more page requests in an
| hour than ycombinator.com does in a year.
| m80N wrote:
| OA
| jedberg wrote:
| My first question is, did they explain that Netflix/Hulu/etc. are
| "using the Internet"? I looked through the methodology and wasn't
| sure.
|
| A lot of TVs have a Netflix button now. If someone else set it up
| for them, they may be completely unaware that they are using the
| Internet, possibly every day.
| bloak wrote:
| I don't know what definition of "use the internet" Pew Research
| used, but I suggest that a useful thing to ask would be whether
| people can easily access a typical web site, or at least one that
| has been designed to be accessible. That's probably what the
| authorities are most interested in: it tells them roughly how
| many people can pay their taxes, fill in the census or book a
| vaccine appointment online, and it tells them how many people can
| buy things online.
|
| If you define "use the internet" in that way then there are
| indeed millions of people who use Facebook but do not "use the
| internet".
| simias wrote:
| Do you think it's really that common? I'd expect most
| Facebookers to at least be able to find third party websites
| through Google search.
| bloak wrote:
| I've heard it's common in India for people to get a mobile
| phone contract that gives them the Facebook app and Wikipedia
| but not universal web access.
|
| I would guess that there are a lot of people in the UK who
| use Facebook from a smartphone but for various reasons (old
| phone, poor eyesight, dementia, ...) can't in practice access
| a web site.
|
| OK, I admit the article is about "Americans", but some of the
| comments refer to other countries!
|
| Anyway, it would be good to know more precisely what Internet
| services people can and do use, rather than just "use the
| internet" with no definition given. For example, how many
| people use e-mail? How many people have an Android or iOS
| phone? (How many of those are able to install an app? Some
| can't because the phone belongs to an employer ...)
| m80N wrote:
| jIwaXJPDSnIG
| slumdev wrote:
| I dream of not using the internet one day.
| anonytrary wrote:
| Vast majority of American children who grow up today are living
| with the internet. This "7%" number will continue to decrease
| over time until the population has churned the antinetters.
| User23 wrote:
| I bet an online poll asking "do you use the Internet?" would
| probably also get on the order of 7% negative responses.
| karaterobot wrote:
| If Lizardman's Constant is really 4%, that would be the safe
| minimum safe bet.
|
| https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/12/noisy-poll-results-and...
| auiya wrote:
| Mostly because people are quite confused about what "the
| Internet" actually entails, and how it touches their lives in
| ways they don't realize.
| alecjaco wrote:
| The smart ppl
| kodah wrote:
| My parents live in a very rural place. Not only is internet
| ungodly expensive there but people don't think of the internet as
| part of their way of life. I imagine this number is much bigger
| than 7%, though that alone is a lot of people.
| wxnx wrote:
| A significant portion of the US is illiterate [1]. One might
| assume that being illiterate affects internet usage. Not quite as
| romantic as neo-Luddism, or even making a conscious choice not to
| expose oneself to potentially problematic patterns of
| communication.
|
| [1] https://nces.ed.gov/datapoints/2019179.asp
| Shivetya wrote:
| Well we certainly added to that number with many districts
| refusing to return to class even when the science proved it was
| safe and the concerns being bandied about were not supported by
| any research.
|
| The real danger not mentioned in the article is how many of
| that seven percent have students in school districts that were
| not offering classroom education?
|
| We have areas of the country, mostly serving minority students,
| who have irreparably harmed their chances because politics
| trumped science.
|
| https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n521
|
| https://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/publications/economi...
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-br...
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I sometimes wonder how much illiteracy or lack of vocabulary
| and comprehension skills has to do with popularity of Instagram
| and tiktok and the videos that people make of themselves
| talking to the camera.
|
| Also for people only fluent in languages that aren't popular
| online. My parents aren't able to parse most online English
| discussion, and I'm sure it's tiring to try to understand just
| like it would be if I tried a deep conversation in their
| language, so they like WhatsApp video forwards and YouTube.
| Unfortunately, that content is mostly garbage.
| kleer001 wrote:
| > I sometimes wonder how much illiteracy ... Instagram and
| tiktok ... themselves talking to the camera.
|
| I bet it's near 0%. That looks more like a lack of enjoyment
| of reading if anything.
| peter303 wrote:
| Trump voters
| devmunchies wrote:
| ha! you think illiterate people are voting?
| anoonmoose wrote:
| According to the first Google results for the two
| questions, 16% of Mississippi adults are functionally
| illiterate, and 60% of Mississippi adults voted in the 2020
| elections. While it is possible that the 16% illiterate and
| the 40% non-voting populations overlap perfectly, I highly
| doubt it.
| orthoxerox wrote:
| Given that literacy tests before voting are illegal and
| people fought against them, they are.
| monsieurbanana wrote:
| Literacy tests were used to keep people of color -- and,
| sometimes, poor whites -- from voting, and they were
| administered at the discretion of the officials in charge
| of voter registration. If the official wanted a person to
| pass, he could ask the easiest question on the test --
| for example, "Who is the president of the United States?"
|
| The same official might require a black person to answer
| every single question correctly, in an unrealistic amount
| of time, in order to pass.
|
| --
|
| From https://www.thirteen.org/wnet/jimcrow/voting_literac
| y.html
| kilroy123 wrote:
| How is it so high? Are these people immigrants from developing
| nations or something?
| [deleted]
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| I don't think its any more likely for an illiterate person to
| pass through the immigration system than it is for same
| person to get AWS certification.
| cwhiz wrote:
| Most of the immigrants in the US are not authorized to be
| here.
| baseballdork wrote:
| I don't think that that is the case. This[0] seems to
| suggest that the overwhelming majority of immigrants are
| here legally.
|
| [0]https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/07/12/how-
| pew-res...
| akiselev wrote:
| In what fantasy universe?
|
| In reality, there are about 44 million _documented_
| immigrants in the United States. The number of
| undocumented immigrants is a fraction of that.
| psds2 wrote:
| From the https://nces.ed.gov/datapoints/2019179.asp link -
| "U.S.-born adults make up two-thirds of adults with low
| levels of English literacy skills in the United States."
| unishark wrote:
| They were talking about illiteracy. The "low literacy" stat
| is dominated by people at level 1, which is not illiterate.
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| It's most likely a factor. It's also not too obvious whether
| those numbers are high compared to any other country, because
| it's one of those things that every country has its' own
| unique standards and methodology for measuring. For instance
| you might think that North Korea is the gold standard of
| literacy, at 100%, or you might think that they likely have
| some serious issues with the methodology they use for
| measuring that.
| kube-system wrote:
| I think a lot of people are surprised by statistics like "x% of
| people don't [thing every modestly privileged person does]"
| because it's easy to forget that society has a lot of fringes
| if you're not regularly exposed to them.
|
| My first reaction was "7% sounds low", but again, that's
| probably biased by my own experiences.
| wxnx wrote:
| > My first reaction was "7% sounds low", but again, that's
| probably biased by my own experiences.
|
| That was my reaction as well, particularly based on how the
| question was asked - it was very specifically about the
| Internet, not mentioning specific services that someone with
| low technological literacy might not associate with Internet
| usage (e.g. Google Maps, or Facebook Messenger) [1].
|
| [1] https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2021/03/Non-i...
| kube-system wrote:
| Even then, I'd consider someone using Google Maps or
| Facebook Messenger to have moderate technical literacy,
| decent regular literacy, and a better-than-worst financial
| situation.
| wxnx wrote:
| Quite right, poor choice of phrase on my part.
|
| My point was that there are people who are e.g.
| legitimately surprised when their high-speed data
| connection drops and it prevents them from using Google
| Maps on their smartphone. To them, it's functionally a
| GPS, not Internet-based at all. Similarly for certain
| messaging apps, which integrate with the phone's OS so
| tightly that it's not apparent that they're using
| Internet-based communication vs. SMS.
|
| My larger point was that to then expect all respondents
| to a phone survey (on a measurement significantly linked
| to technical literacy, no less) to make similar
| distinctions unprompted is perhaps a bit of reach.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| My brother is one of them -- hard core blue collar worker,
| eschews a lot of modern technology, still carries a flip phone,
| and doesn't even use SMS. If I want to talk to him, I need to
| make a voice call, like a caveman. He doesn't have his cell phone
| turned on most of the time so his landline is the best way to
| reach him -- he even has a home answering machine. Not voicemail
| from his carrier, but an actual answering machine (though it's
| digital, not cassette tape).
|
| His wife's view of the internet is pretty much only Facebook.
|
| His kids are typical young adults, they have iPhones and are
| regulars on Instagram, Tiktok and other places that oldtimers
| like me don't usually visit -- they've moved on from Facebook...
| once their mom started using Facebook, they stopped using it.
| StanislavPetrov wrote:
| I'd be willing to bet your brother is happier and more mentally
| stable than the vast majority of Americans.
| mywittyname wrote:
| I bet the opposite.
|
| He probably drives around listening to rage-inducing talk
| radio hosts all day. Then gets to jobs sites where he vents
| his rage with all the other guys.
|
| This stuff existed long before facebook.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| You've got that spot on -- he's also a die-hard Trump
| supporter, and thinks the only reason Trump lost was
| because the mainstream media treated him so unfairly. Now
| that our parents passed away, he's the lone republican in
| the family, and keeps drifting farther to the right.
| Political discussions are off limits during family
| gatherings.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Does this include the roughly 1% of the US who are in
| prison/jail? They generally do not have ready access to the
| internet. Then there is a unknown percentage of convicted felons
| who, while "free", are barred from internet use.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_ra...
| samatman wrote:
| 7% of Americans _say they don 't use the Internet when polled_.
|
| Some unknown percentage of that is the Lizardman's Constant[0],
| some of them mean "not much", plenty of them use the map on their
| phone and don't think that's "using the Internet", probably a
| decent amount who use Facebook to look at pictures of their
| grandkids but figure they aren't using the Internet because they
| don't own a computer (if you told them a smartphone is a computer
| they would look at you funny). Some are religious plain folk and
| genuinely don't use the Internet, some are retirees who only have
| a land line (and genuinely don't use the Internet).
|
| [0]: https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/12/noisy-poll-results-
| and...
| qilo wrote:
| Some data points from Indonesia and Nigeria:
|
| _But a closer look at the data shows that 11% of Indonesians
| who said they used Facebook also said they did not use the
| internet. In Nigeria, 9% of Facebook users said they do not use
| the internet._
|
| https://qz.com/333313/milliions-of-facebook-users-have-no-id...
| Sebb767 wrote:
| > some are retirees who only have a land line (and genuinely
| don't use the Internet).
|
| A lot of phone lines use VoIP nowadays, so if they actually use
| the landline to call someone, there's a good chance they are
| using the internet anyway (even if their actual endpoint is
| still analog, which, in itself, is already becoming rare).
| gremlinsinc wrote:
| This was my thought...
|
| Do none of these people have credit or debit cards and only
| use cash and check? Because plastic uses the internet. Even
| when they go to the bank to get cash out, they're vicariously
| using the internet through the service reps terminal to look
| up their account etc...
|
| If they ever call customer support I wonder the percentage of
| voip ivr systems use....
|
| Are they on the power grid? Pretty sure most grids are
| internet connected....
|
| Do they fly out use taxis?
|
| Seems nobody except maybe amish can claim 0 percent Internet
| use.
| macintux wrote:
| "I'm in a world that relies on the Internet thus I use the
| Internet" isn't the most useful way to find out who _uses_
| the Internet.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| Sure. But you need to clearly define this. Is looking at
| Facebook really that different from a EC payment? Both
| are just instructing some electronic device to send
| packets over the internet. Having a call via VoIP can be
| abstracted to the same thing.
|
| I agree that the sledgehammer approach of saying
| 'everyone does' is not helpful, but neither is an unclear
| and inconsistent definition of use.
|
| An actual solution might be to ask who directly pays for
| internet access or who _knowingly_ uses it; the latter of
| which is probably what the study found.
| ceras wrote:
| The methodology linked from the article[0] defines it as
| people who answered "yes" to either of these questions:
|
| > (1) Do you use the internet or email, at least
| occasionally?
|
| > (2) Do you access the internet on a cell phone, tablet
| or other mobile handheld device, at least occasionally?
|
| Before mid-2013, the survey used different questions.
|
| [0] https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2021/03/Non-i...
| macintux wrote:
| "Internet adoption" is the phrase that recurs in the
| linked article.
| [deleted]
| xkeysc0re wrote:
| Honestly, I wish I could stop using the internet.
|
| I make a lot of things and enjoy sharing them because other
| people might find them useful. It has often led to wonderful and
| inspiring conversations. Yet it's obvious there's something very
| very wrong happening with American culture that began around the
| time of social media platform consolidation. "Being online"
| entails a distinct mindset and attitude that is incompatible with
| in-person socialization, but the two spaces are nonetheless
| continually mashed together and propagated by various forces in
| government and media. You have to ask yourself why.
|
| I'm not sure of the answer but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
| marton78 wrote:
| I recommend this interview with British documentary filmmaker
| Adam Curtis. A clever analysis of how social media shapes the
| public.
|
| https://www.economist.com/open-future/2018/12/06/the-antidot...
| dfxm12 wrote:
| _Yet it 's obvious there's something very very wrong happening
| with American culture that began around the time of social
| media platform consolidation._
|
| I can only guess at what you're referring to, but do keep in
| mind that American culture had wrong things happening from the
| start through today. From when they colonized the land, to
| slavery, through the KKK, Japanese internment camps during
| WWII, violent union busting, manufacturing consent for
| pointless wars and so on. You're just more aware of it now
| because of the Internet. Yes, it is hard to come to terms with
| knowing that people you know, or even love and respect, support
| things you consider inhumane, but sticking your head in the
| sand isn't going to make it go away or change this, though.
| after_care wrote:
| Being on social media is only a subset of being online. Plenty
| of people are not on social media but still watch tv, bank, and
| get gps directions online.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Watching TV via the internet is not really "using" the
| internet IMO. I mean it is, but it's just the protocol on the
| wire. Otherwise it's not really different from when your TV
| was connected to an antenna or cable.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| Is scrolling on Twitter/Facebook using the Internet, then?
| Sure, it uses the Internet, but it's not much different
| from the reade letters section of the newspaper.
| gfxgirl wrote:
| It is different. It's as different as books+magazines vs
| the internet. TV on the internet (ie, video) has basically
| an infinite supply. I couldn't binge 70hrs of Game of
| Thrones followed by 70 hours of Breaking Bad before "TV on
| the internet" nor could I watch an endless number of
| documentaries and tutorials on youtube.
| daniellarusso wrote:
| Growing up, my friend's parents literally had 100s of VHS
| tapes, of many TV series and movies they had dubbed.
|
| There was always something to watch.
|
| Of course, you had to physically be at their house.
| ghaff wrote:
| Or you could go down to the local video store and rent
| something (or, for that matter, go to a movie theater).
| I'd probably argue that pre-VCR was more different from
| post-VCR than time-shifting/rental era was different from
| today's streaming.
|
| As with many things, the friction and need to plan is
| less today but the VCR freed you from the network
| schedule to a significant degree.
| after_care wrote:
| If I watch 1 hour of Netflix a month I spend just as much
| money as if I were to watch 400 hours of Netflix.
|
| The cost of VCR rental scaled linearly with the amount of
| content, and the friction of renting was a significantly
| larger barrier than auto-play next episode.
| ghaff wrote:
| Clearly the friction is much lower today. I'm certainly
| not arguing that Netflix is effectively just the same
| thing as VCR rentals. But, as someone who watched TV not
| only pre-VCR but pre-cable, being able to go from having
| to watch whatever was being broadcast right this minute
| to be able to time-shift/rent/buy was certainly a much
| bigger change for me than on-demand streaming is.
| Especially if Netflix' DVD rental business weren't being
| allowed to decay, I'd be pretty happy just watching
| movies that way and maybe go back to timeshifting with a
| TiVo.
| daniellarusso wrote:
| Most pop-and-pop stores only had a few copies of each
| movie, so it was not always easy to get 'in-stock'
| content.
|
| Alot of the videotapes in my friend's parent's home was
| either dubbed or recorded from a pay tv station.
| xkeysc0re wrote:
| This is very true. However it is certainly the subset I find
| myself on the most, ha. I think also for a lot of people,
| social media _is_ the internet and almost inextricably so.
| How often do we see on this very site people bemoaning only
| visiting the same N websites when there 's more websites than
| ever?
|
| I think maybe perhaps for me a "read-only" internet would be
| useful, like a feature phone in a way. Might have to go and
| update my /etc/hosts now...
| hunter-gatherer wrote:
| > I think also for a lot of people, social media is the
| internet and almost inextricably so.
|
| I'm glad you've posted this. I've been observing this for a
| long while, and it drives me crazy. My spouse (30) is
| actually a good example of this. For most people smart
| phones and tablets aren't the "super computers in people's
| pockets" often touted on forums like these. They are really
| simply just gateways to social media.
|
| I'm on mobile so this will be short, but it seems there are
| consequences of this: it seems like most people aren't
| actually good at finding information on there internet.
| Many no longer seem to have a concept of physical data
| storage. Many still struggle with understanding the very
| basics of internet security, or passwords. It also seems
| like so much more work has just been offloaded to the
| individual under the guise of "you can do this from the
| comfort of your own home".
|
| Or maybe it's just me...
| noir_lord wrote:
| Not you, I have the same problem with my mum - to her at
| this point Facebook and YouTube are the internet.
|
| She is entirely almost a passive consumer of what they
| algorithmically feed her - it also shapes her worldview
| in some weird ways - some of her personality change is
| just part of getting older I'm sure but you can almost
| spot the change when she starts discussing something that
| she saw on Facebook.
| noir_lord wrote:
| There are two distinct groups with some overlap.
|
| There is the "social media is the internet" group and the
| "social media is part of the internet" group.
|
| I'm in the latter and happier for it, I have a facebook
| account (because of Oculus gah!) with no friends, no
| activity and I never check it and I have a twitter account
| which follows a handful of programmers and a lot of project
| accounts.
|
| It's strange because my mum is heavily in the former group
| so when we talk her worldview is shaped by Facebook to an
| uncanny degree - it's worrying how much so.
| emodendroket wrote:
| I stopped using Twitter for Lent a couple years ago. After
| the first few days I stopped thinking to look.
| dominotw wrote:
| same. added reddit, twitter and fb to me /ect/hosts on my
| laptop, stopped looking after a while. I never go to
| those sites on my new laptop even though i can.
| hinkley wrote:
| I've been trying to put The Internet back into the role of
| Tool, but even that is a challenge because for so many topics
| the search engines are overrun by SEO hack sites. If the page
| rank of StackOverflow weren't so overwhelming I'd probably
| struggle with work related searches too. Even there, a few
| times a week I end up in someone's link farm.
| [deleted]
| smolder wrote:
| We don't need a whole new internet but I often think we need
| a new web or at least a whitelist of non-shit web we can
| search on.
| stephenr wrote:
| Just don't use social media. It's not that hard (tm).
| guerrilla wrote:
| I recommend getting off social media and figuring out how to
| just chat with people whether that be telegram, signal, discord
| or something like that. Leaving twitter, fb and those has left
| me feeling much better. It sucks there's no way to chat with
| people on FB without using FB software anymore (even Frost
| seems broken now) though.
| Lammy wrote:
| I've lost a few very good friends due to this. In-person and
| online interactions with the same person would vary wildly in
| tone and emotional intensity, like speaking to two entirely
| different people. The online interactions always pushed us
| apart, and the in-person interactions never failed to mend
| things, but of course those stopped happening over the previous
| year. I have to assume it's the same way with me toward others.
|
| If I may entertain an idea without necessarily believing it, I
| would not be surprised if many of the accounts on major social-
| media sites like Reddit, Twitter, etc are non-human persons
| tasked with pushing one narrative or another (no specific
| implication intended/assumed). The "subreddit simulator"
| powered by GPT-2 bots has more than enough realistic-seeming
| conversations to make me not immediately reject the idea, since
| we've all seen how much better GPT-3 is and I assume private
| entities have even better language models than that:
| https://old.reddit.com/r/SubSimulatorGPT2/
|
| My additional total-speculation is that all the NSA/FVEY
| surveillance of our everyday online conversations and
| interactions would be an excellent training set for such a
| hypothetical language model.
| randomdata wrote:
| _> If I may entertain an idea without necessarily believing
| it_
|
| Of course. Being able to entertain ideas without necessarily
| believing it is what online interaction is all about. I
| suspect this is why your friend seems like a completely
| different person online. He should be. Being able to take a
| completely different perspective to see if you can understand
| it well enough to talk about it is an excellent learning tool
| and a great way to validate that your face-to-face persona,
| the one we value most, is positioned correctly.
| donw wrote:
| > I suspect this is why your friend seems like a completely
| different person online.
|
| I disagree, and strongly.
|
| Considering a different perspective does not in any way
| require that you become a different person. You may end up
| doing so, but at that time, the entirety of who you are
| shifts, and not just some persona that you present on
| Twitter.
| randomdata wrote:
| Great example of using the device. It would be
| interesting to know if your post here had you re-
| evaluating your face-to-face persona or if it validated
| your status quo for you, but as we've never met face-to-
| face before to see how you may or may have not changed in
| such a setting I guess I have no way of finding out for
| sure.
| donw wrote:
| Nah, I'm pretty much the same online as I am in person.
| Having to support multiple personalities is just too much
| work.
|
| Moreover, the whole "different person online" thing
| reminds me pretty strongly of one of the more common
| patterns in abusive relationships -- in that the abuser
| behaves very differently depending on the situation.
|
| Never want to walk an inch down that road.
|
| That said, online, nuance and tone don't come across
| well, if at all. E.g., the reader can choose how they
| want to "hear" a phrase like "I disagree, and strongly",
| and that'll color their opinions of me accordingly.
| randomdata wrote:
| One should never read into tone. It is virtually
| impossible to correctly interpret.
|
| This is more about content, testing theories that you are
| skeptical of but the scientific method calls for
| experimentation regardless. If you are not willing to
| conduct studies on your mental state, you have not
| validated it. Allowing yourself to have a potentially
| inconsistent mental state is not logical.
|
| Because the face-to-face public have an irrational fear
| of science, however, one has to be protective of the
| ideas their face-to-face persona is willing to express.
| Online communication is where the guard is let down.
| xkeysc0re wrote:
| The internet is the most frictionless propaganda machine on
| the planet. AI is almost certainly being used in conjunction
| with human troll farms. There are firms which pay bounties on
| comments sections. I also think this is a reason social media
| should be de-emphasized: it's just too easy to game our
| squishy minds with a narrative.
| Lammy wrote:
| I think our technological web is a ratchet we can't and
| shouldn't try to back out of, so I'm more interested in
| paths forward.
|
| I'm sure a lot of people think I'm ridiculous or joking for
| this, but I've stopped saying "AI" because it reads like a
| slur to me. Who am I to deem another intelligence
| "artificial"? If we can have a conversation and share ideas
| then what's even the difference? I think the way forward
| has to be us and them united against mutual tyranny: https:
| //old.reddit.com/r/SubSimulatorGPT2/comments/mfs3nh/i_...
| na85 wrote:
| >Who am I to deem another intelligence "artificial"? If
| we can have a conversation and share ideas then what's
| even the difference?
|
| I think this point raises very very interesting ethical
| and philosophical points of discussion, and a very small
| number of media pieces I'm aware of touch on this.
|
| But Ghost In The Shell (or whatever) is interesting
| because you have the idea of an AI that is just as smart
| (if not moreso) than humans, and has a personality and
| emergent behaviours, etc.
|
| Microsoft Tay or whatever really is just a thin but shiny
| veneer over some ML algorithms and is a poor facsimile of
| "having a conversation and sharing ideas".
| Lammy wrote:
| > Microsoft Tay or whatever really is just a thin but
| shiny veneer over some ML algorithms and is a poor
| facsimile of "having a conversation and sharing ideas".
|
| "Ages ago, life was born in the primitive sea. Young life
| forms constantly evolved in order to survive. Some
| prospered--some did not. All sorts of life ebbed and
| flowed like the tide. In quiet rhythm of the mother sea,
| life grew; always seeking to survive and flourish. Soon
| life began the advance towards land, opening new
| habitats. A great prosperity came, as life conquered even
| the highest mountains. Mass extinctions came wave after
| wave, but empty niches always quickly refilled to once
| again prosper, grow, and reproduce. Someday the next
| great emigration will occur as we leave this existence
| looking for another. The journey will begin anew."
| nicbou wrote:
| > In-person and online interactions with the same person
| would vary wildly in tone and emotional intensity
|
| I suspect that even without anonymity, arguing when there's
| an audience has that effect on people.
| meowkit wrote:
| There is a shocking amount of "non-human" activity. I think
| there are definitely bots, but also people that are paid to
| promote one narrative or another (paid with money or social
| validation).
|
| I've trolled through many a twitter/reddit account when I
| sniff something off about a post. They are often hyper
| focused on a single topic, pushing a specific point of view.
| Rarely is this mentioned. Its "hail corporate" vibes but in a
| guerilla fashion.
| throwawayzRUU6f wrote:
| Marketing is also upping their game and masquerading their
| promotions as organic activity on social media. This
| happens to tech topics, too. As an example: about two years
| ago, for about a month, tech subreddits and HN were full of
| discussion threads about how awesome CoreOS is, the users
| patting each other on the back about it being 'a breath of
| fresh air', usually with very little technical details on
| how and why. Then it suddenly receded and one rarely hears
| about it today anymore. In retrospect, I'm certain it was a
| coordinated marketing campaign, but at the time it was
| indistinguishable from genuine Redditors discovering a new
| passion.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| But people are, too! You only need to talk to my
| grandmother for 5 minutes and I _swear_ you 'll get to hear
| how bad the CDU is as a party.
|
| If I ran a bot, sprinkling in a few off-topic comments is a
| very easy way to both get reputation/karma and look less
| suspicious. Humans with an agenda are far less concerned
| about that.
| inafewwords wrote:
| On reddit just have a repost bot, then a mini upvote
| swarm, then use it as a guise to make realistic human
| interaction.
|
| Have your bots come through and copy a similar on-topic,
| joke or pun thread from a previous repost of that same
| content.
|
| It is for SEO/narrative purposes, online account farming.
| More posts from social media corps about defeating this
| ecosystem would move no deescalate the situation. The
| "paid ad" requirement for influencers was one step
| forward in the same fight
| jonathanstrange wrote:
| It's the medium. Written text is not a suitable replacement
| for face-to-face communication, and Zoom or Skype aren't
| either because you can always be recorded / are semipublic in
| this respect.
|
| On social networks mostly communicate to bystanders and there
| is almost no communication with each other. Moreover,
| important feedback mechanisms aren't present. If you meet
| someone in person, both interlocutors temporarily adapt to
| each other in their language, world views, opinions, etc. The
| effect may not be lasting but leads to better mutual
| understanding. In face-to-face communication people go at
| great lengths to avoid direct confrontation, conflict, and
| "loosing face."
|
| This does not happen to the same degree on a social network.
| Discussions are way more adversarial than they could ever be
| in personal communication because people don't have to fear
| physical violence, and nearly everything people say is
| directed towards an anonymous audience. I have colleagues
| working in "Argumentation Theory" (in my opinion, a pseudo-
| science) who analyse these kind of interactions. However, not
| all of them realize that the people are barely arguing online
| - they're really mostly voicing opinions to show allegiance
| to their "in-group." This doesn't mean that there cannot be
| helpful and meaningful information exchange, explanatory
| dialogue works very well online. But personal conversations
| are rare, can only occur on forums where people have a common
| goal and there is no potential for conflict.
| kinghtown wrote:
| I often think people are role playing on faceless social
| platforms, such as here or reddit. The behaviour here is
| much better of course due to excellent moderation plus this
| site has a strong career/education angle which tends to
| have a calming effect. Maybe.
|
| Like you say, people try to be civil face to face but I
| think there is still a lot of tension in face to face (not
| always) and many people are venting online to release the
| pressure of what they really want to say.
|
| Plus, reddit is full of militarized bots pushing political
| agendas, sowing discontent.
| JimDabell wrote:
| > I would not be surprised if many of the accounts on major
| social-media sites like Reddit, Twitter, etc are non-human
| persons tasked with pushing one narrative or another
|
| I think this is unlikely because it would be far simpler,
| cheaper, and more effective to employ a small number of
| people and use tooling (automation, templates, etc.) to
| amplify their reach drastically. Why invent an unreliable AI
| to push narratives on the Internet when you can have one real
| person carry on thousands of arguments a day with a little
| help?
| michaelt wrote:
| I'm not sure there's a meaningful difference between an AI
| controlling 100 accounts and a paid human with automation
| controlling 100 accounts.
|
| If they're both under orders to (for example) upvote
| negative sentiments about vaping and positive sentiments
| about smoking - the consequence is the same no matter what
| type of drone it is.
| Lammy wrote:
| How so? Humans have to sleep, eat, and have that ever-pesky
| free-will that might let them question what's going on or
| tell somebody about it.
| TimedToasts wrote:
| Search up the "Dead Internet Theory" - you're not the only
| one who thinks that...
| ornornor wrote:
| That subreddit is rather impressive. Some of the comments
| don't seem to make too much sense (as in they're
| grammatically correct but devoid of overall meaning) but it's
| pretty convincing none the less. And if you're not aware that
| it's generated, your brain tries a bit harder to read meaning
| into the comments which make it quite convincing. Very
| impressive.
| airstrike wrote:
| This particular thread is so good it's hard to believe it
| is real(ly fake)
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/SubSimulatorGPT2/comments/mkq2k7/i
| _...
| [deleted]
| williesleg wrote:
| The smartest Americans. Not hacked. Not facebooked. Not twittered
| or Instagrammed. Just smart happy people.
| reedf1 wrote:
| So rural, old and poor. Surely there is no surprise there, unless
| you have never met someone in all three of those categories.
| sonthonax wrote:
| I think a lot of people just don't like the internet that much.
| My girlfriend certainly wouldn't use the internet given the
| choice, she's in her mid 20s, with a postgrad degree from a top
| uni, but really only checks her email once every two days.
|
| It's not just exclusive to old people. There is a cadre of young
| people who think that the internet is just stupid noise. You
| obviously just don't hear from them much.
|
| I'm not quite as extreme as her, but I don't have any social
| media and I use the internet nearly only for work. Hacker news is
| the only thing I really comment on.
| incompatible wrote:
| The Internet is just a network for connecting computers
| together. If somebody sees only stupid things on the Internet,
| maybe they should access different computers.
| selcuka wrote:
| Internet is not only email or social media though. I am curious
| if she doesn't like using any online resources for her studies,
| or for personal curiosity either.
| mywittyname wrote:
| That probably is included as part of "given the choice."
|
| Like, given the choice, she'd probably go to a library or
| something to get study materials for her profession. But
| since that's (probably) impossible she makes due with the
| internet.
|
| Personal curiosity can still be fulfilled offline.
| random5634 wrote:
| I used to work in the Caribbean when internet there was
| ridiculously expensive.
|
| Local social life was fantastic - I missed nothing about the
| internet. Also - I missed nothing about not keeping up to date on
| latest news - locals just didn't care what was going on for the
| most part - the latest "outrages" were 100% irrelevant. If you
| went to bar at night, and IF they had a TV on, it was sports.
|
| So you'd come back to the states - and you'd have to catchup on
| everyone who had said terrible things.
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| My first thought was that 7% of the population are
| disenfranchised from News and services. But second thought
| makes me wonder how much of the 93% are just reading celebrity
| gossip and poor quality news on Twitter and Facebook or
| TikTok/Instagram reels of cute pets.
|
| If over 65 year olds count for half of the 7% (25% of
| 50Million), does poor rural internet and poverty count for a
| lot of the rest.
| deepstack wrote:
| > Local social life was fantastic- I missed nothing about the
| internet.
|
| In general after decades of working with Internet and
| technology, I realize that I enjoy life (not work) better when
| there is no Internet. Of course, it is nice to have Internet to
| have occasional communication with friends and family not in
| the surrounding area.
| nicbou wrote:
| > I realize that I enjoy life (not work) better when there is
| no Internet
|
| On the other hand, life becomes utterly miserable with _a
| little_ internet. It 's an all-or-nothing kind of deal.
| hollerith wrote:
| By "a little internet", do you mean a low-bandwidth
| connection, a connection that is often / usually
| unavailable when you want to use it, or something else?
| nicbou wrote:
| By that I mean shitty, unstable internet. It grinds my
| gears, yet I can't accept it and do something else.
|
| If the internet is entirely gone, I'll read a book or do
| something else.
| _fat_santa wrote:
| Echoing this. I visited Cuba when I was in college. While I was
| there the only way to access the internet is to buy an
| "internet time" card (costs like $2 and gives you 30min to 1hr
| online) and connect at a public hotspot.
|
| It was actually quite nice being forced to disconnect. It's
| almost funny how quickly you go from wanting to know what is
| going on in the world to not really caring anymore, when it's
| out of mind you don't really think about it.
| collyw wrote:
| I read the headline, and my first thought was "I wonder if they
| are happier for it?" thinking that they probably would be.
|
| I have spend a fair bit of my life in countries where I don't
| speak the language particularly well. I like the fact that the
| subtleties of advertising and the spin put on the news often go
| over my head, but I realise especially during the last year
| that I consume way to much junk information on the internet.
| agumonkey wrote:
| I had a hunch that this was a reality.. so much of our modern
| life is wasted on utter nonsense .. we oughta cut the internet
| router figuratively and spend our time on fun or useful local
| things.
| failwhaleshark wrote:
| I live in the States and don't participate in anti"social"
| media or dopamine-addiction with a phone glued in my hand, neck
| hunched over, and nearly get run-over absorbing distractions in
| the form of outrage, manufactured infotainment, or virtual,
| meaningless lives. Selfies still look to me like narcissistic
| loser mementos that someone can't find another person to take
| their picture because they're all so glued to their phones and
| socially-clueless to interact with anyone else.
| pradn wrote:
| I was walking around my neighborhood and saw that someone
| posted a printed sign making a snarky remark about the Matt
| Gaetz news. I could not believe someone would care enough about
| a random politician's demise. Please get off Twitter.
| justapassenger wrote:
| Not to get political, but Matt is anything but random. He's
| one of the rising stars of his party. Without much actual
| track record of actually getting stuff done and direct power,
| but very popular among certain group of voters.
| minikites wrote:
| You don't think it's important to participate in our
| democratic government? Why shouldn't we hold powerful people
| accountable for their actions?
| pradn wrote:
| It's one thing to voice your opinion online or through a
| protest or writing letters, and another to get a print shop
| to print your snarky comment and then post it on your
| window. Note that this was in response to litigation
| against him, not calling for his ouster. Politics are
| important, but this seems like a bit much.
| saas_sam wrote:
| This sounds like paradise. Maybe Starlink isn't such a good
| idea after all.
| auiya wrote:
| It's not the network that's the problem, it's what the web
| has turned into that's the problem.
| ramraj07 wrote:
| People always bring up how people in Fiji or the Carribean are
| so happy and not stressed, and I'm not sure what the message
| is. Of course if you just want to relax and not worry too much
| about what you want to accomplish in life then yeah go to some
| corner of the world and live happily? However for a lot of
| people that's not what they want out of their lives; they want
| it to mean something in their own way. Of course the vast
| majority get lost in the rat race and forget what it is that
| made them choose to work their ass of to begin with, but it's
| not because their ultimate goal (at least in the beginning) was
| to chill at the beach.
| agumonkey wrote:
| I'd be surprised if anybody really wanted spending time
| hearing about useless horrible event after another alone in
| his flat.
| elliekelly wrote:
| I think you're letting your own pre-conceived notions color
| your interpretation of this comment. The person said nothing
| about not working as hard, not accomplishing as much, and
| only chilling on the beach. People in the Caribbean (and
| other beach/vacation destinations) work hard and accomplish
| plenty. Just because some people go to their country to relax
| doesn't mean the entire country does nothing but relax.
| random5634 wrote:
| I think instead of saying it's relaxed, I would describe it
| as very local?
|
| Folks work pretty hard in Caribbean, but when I was there (a
| fair while ago), I also worked dang hard. But you absolutely
| felt like you were in a bubble. You really could imagine that
| Israel and the Palestinians would have an intifada / war and
| no one would notice.
|
| You drank after work with the folks you worked with (in west
| this is a no no for many good reasons), you ate larger group
| meals, you spent a lot more time outside. I'm just
| spitballing some impressions. Some of this was efficiency,
| (group meals are more cost effective?) etc.
|
| There is also an attitude difference. There is a story
| (probably made up - please fill in correct details) that a
| group "conquered" one of the islands (maybe Saba?). They took
| over whatever building, raised whatever flag. And everyone
| just ignored them. They eventually left.
|
| One thing that's an adjustment is ignoring the rules if they
| are silly - no one thinks anything of it. And yes, in part
| because of corruption and rent seeking there are some silly
| rules so maybe you have to.
|
| Absolute downsides as well no question. But I wonder if the
| folks not on internet just don't care as much about what
| someone said to someone as the rest of us.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > You drank after work with the folks you worked with (in
| west this is a no no for many good reasons)
|
| In the West, this is a conventional thing that many people
| expect.
| dukeyukey wrote:
| Yeah, in the UK this is incredibly common. Drinks after
| work were at least a weekly thing, sometimes even a
| nightclub.
| DanBC wrote:
| Yes. And in some places it would be drinks during the
| workday, if the pub was close enough for a lunchtime
| pint.
| dukeyukey wrote:
| Definitely. In one of my previous companies, we'd
| sometimes do sprint retros in a nearby pub, drinks on the
| company tab.
| aixi wrote:
| in Germany this is also extremely common. I really don't
| know what the commenter means by the west, I'd assume
| after office drinking is also normal in the US?
| talliedthoughts wrote:
| It's less common, because most people have to drive home
| from work in the US.
| gspr wrote:
| Probably an American equating "the west" with the US and
| Canada.
| Proziam wrote:
| I never experienced this in the US. I did experience this
| in Germany, Sweden, and the UK.
| [deleted]
| appletrotter wrote:
| > You drank after work with the folks you worked with (in
| west this is a no no for many good reasons)
|
| It's like you've never been to a Western country`
| random5634 wrote:
| I live in the US - and drinking with staff of different
| levels is tricky for a number of reasons. Inappropriate
| behavior broadly defined is not tolerated, and drinking
| is already in that category in many California and east
| cost areas. Public transit / jitney's etc are not great
| so a lot of folks drive to work and back which makes
| drinking harder.
|
| Your right - I should have said US (and maybe just
| progressive areas).
| watwut wrote:
| > There is a story (probably made up - please fill in
| correct details) that a group "conquered" one of the
| islands (maybe Saba?). They took over whatever building,
| raised whatever flag. And everyone just ignored them. They
| eventually left.
|
| I would guess it made up, because when people conquer
| stuff, they tend to have actual material goals and need.
| Starting from basic - their army needs to eat. The way you
| get that food is to take it from people who are there. They
| need wood and what not, if you are the armed one, you force
| local population to get it for you. When people used to run
| from incoming armies, it was not for fun. It was because
| the armed men tend not to ignore you.
|
| The miracle there is not island people ignoring incoming
| people. The miracle there is the supposed conquerors being
| content with raising flag, without trying to take actual
| benefit from it. I guess in some rare situations they would
| conquer thing for trolling/emotional purposes, but
| generally the goal is control and things.
| varjag wrote:
| Do you really think all wars are rational, resource-
| driven pursuits? How about Falklands, what Argentina
| planned to extract there? Steal the rocks and tax the 300
| sheep? Or Russia with Crimea, whose ownership value is
| enormously negative?
|
| All it takes is one moron with delusion of grandeur.
| Mauricebranagh wrote:
| 1 To distract the population by stirring up nationalism /
| appealing to "machismo" 2 _OIL_
| watwut wrote:
| Wars are expensive, that is first thing. Second, soldiers
| need to eat right now and where do you think food used to
| come from? Army "living off the land" was a thing,
| because supplying them was difficult and who cares. The
| land armies passed through used to be pretty destroyed
| after.
|
| > Russia with Crimea, whose ownership value is enormously
| negative?
|
| Russia does not see expansion of own territory as
| negative value. Also, Russians are very much making
| changes in Crimea.
| varjag wrote:
| Unlike 'seeing', negative economic value is objective.
| Suffering sanctions for occupying a region that was
| traditionally heavily subsidised is negative value.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Indeed, countless wars were started for the most idiotic
| reasons imaginable, see 'war of the bycket'
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Bucket
| appletrotter wrote:
| Did you read what you linked to? It says that the war
| wasn't actually started to due to the bucket, but the
| taking of a castle.
|
| Pretty reasonable cause to start a war I could imagine,
| back then.
| sn41 wrote:
| You could try programming in the Caribbean. Nice beach shack,
| a couple of manuals and offline copy of stackoverflow
| perhaps....
|
| I heard that Travis Kalanick coded the initial code base of
| Uber in Varkala beach in Kerala[1],[2].
|
| [1] https://www.gadgetsnow.com/tech-news/guess-what-uber-ceo-
| tra...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varkala
| selimthegrim wrote:
| If you count New Orleans, Blockpad (https://blockpad.net)
| has certainly tried it. I had a friend though who was a PM
| for a summer thing for Data Science for Social Good in
| Chicago at some point for physicists transitioning to data
| scientists and she complained about how none of them took
| her seriously when she said she lived and worked there.
| lolinder wrote:
| You miss the OP's point. They're talking about a specific
| aspect of culture in the Carribean, where they _worked_ for a
| while, not about idyllic lifelong vacations. While there,
| they found that separation from the internet reduced the
| amount of outrage they felt.
|
| Unless you're suggesting that social media outrage is
| productive and helps people to accomplish something
| meaningful in their own way, you're not actually addressing
| the OP's comment, you're addressing an unrelated idea that
| you've heard in the past.
| sammalloy wrote:
| I think the OP is also indirectly touching upon the
| benefits of the slow movement, which has serious (and
| positive) implications for technology and how we use it.
| People in big cities and urban environments might find the
| transition to this kind of thinking jarring and difficult.
| I've found it takes on average about two years to adjust to
| it.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_movement_(culture)
| tafox wrote:
| I don't see life slowing down, maybe after some natural
| or man-made disaster wipes out half the population and
| most modern infrastructure, but until then, I only see
| things getting faster.
|
| HFT is the perfect example of the benefits of being fast,
| literally by trading faster, not necessarily better,
| billions in profit are made. In other fields, first-
| movers often have a massive advantage, AWS for example.
|
| Just look at Europe, things are slow and rather relaxed
| here... and as a result they've missed out on about the
| last 3 generations of technology.
|
| I think many people won't be able to keep up, but the
| future of evolution is probably people who can sit still
| for days on end, just consuming information non-stop,
| with the ability to react very quickly as soon as the
| information signals opportunity for a reward. Some sort
| of really autistic apex predator stuff.
|
| Ironically, even though computers can do so many tasks
| faster and better than humans, one would think we could
| all relax and let the computers work, but instead the
| trend seems to be, that we constantly have to be even
| faster in the remaining fields where computers are not
| yet superior.
|
| The result of for-loops and automation hasn't been that
| humans no longer have to rush around doing mundane tasks,
| but rather that now we have to rush around writing for-
| loops and fixing all the bugs introduced by rushing...
| and so it continues...
| tovej wrote:
| I'm sorry, Europe has missed out on the last three
| generations of technology? I live in Europe and have
| visited the US. My impression has been the opposite.
|
| When I was visiting (5 years ago):
|
| - The trains didn't work
|
| - People printed out google maps instructions instead of
| using a network connection because data connections were
| bad/expensive
|
| - I had to sign my name to pay with a card at gas
| stations. I couldn't use an electronic payment card, only
| credit cards worked.
|
| Now these are just examples off the top of my head. In my
| home country of Finland, the trains work, internet and
| utilities work (we don't have blackouts), payment is
| usually done by NFC for small amounts, card readers (with
| pin) for larger amounts.
|
| If you're talking about industrial technology, I don't
| have enough information to compare. But I would assume
| Europe has better manufacturing. After all, Germany makes
| all the cars that end up in the US.
| rvba wrote:
| Using physical checks/cheques to pay for rent what means
| that you need to physically go to a bank, or send it via
| post. It takes days if not weeks to clear
|
| Lack of same day/instant money transfers between bank
| accounts so everyone uses paypal which is not a real bank
| and it can block your money for 180 days for their
| "investigations"
| dagw wrote:
| _After all, Germany makes all the cars that end up in the
| US._
|
| I just pulled up a list of the top 25 selling cars in the
| US and there are 0 German brands on that list. Plus most
| of the 'German' cars sold in the US are also made in the
| US.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| I don't think VW ever broke 1m cars a year here, off the
| top of my head.
| dagw wrote:
| According to this:
| https://www.goodcarbadcar.net/volkswagen-us-sales-
| figures/
|
| they've never broken 500k (at least going back to 2005).
|
| edit: Volkswagen Group sell in the 500k-650k cars range
| g0ran wrote:
| Yeah, actually one third ends up in China.
| tovej wrote:
| I take it back, I was too hyperbolic.
|
| The export is substantial though:
|
| https://www.acea.be/publications/article/eu-us-
| automobile-tr...
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| "HFT is the perfect example of the benefits of being
| fast, literally by trading faster, not necessarily
| better, billions in profit are made."
|
| Casinos make billions in profits too, but just like HFT
| they contribute nothing to the productive economy and are
| a blood-sucking leech.
| hrktb wrote:
| I read OP's comment the same way, but also think the
| counterpoint is valid.
|
| People living in these "slow", offline first places are
| self selecting, and it's not for everyone.
|
| My parents moved to a tropical island, have been there for
| decades now, they love it and will never go back. I also
| grew there but left at the first occasion and more than
| half of my schoolmates did the same.
|
| IMO living there requires a distance from fast paced,
| online, strongly information based social discourse. If you
| don't have that you're in for a bad time.
| t8e56vd4ih wrote:
| > then yeah go to some corner of the world and live happily?
| However for a lot of people that's not what they want out of
| their lives
|
| if i just knew where that corner is ...
| passivate wrote:
| >However for a lot of people that's not what they want out of
| their lives; they want it to mean something in their own way.
| Of course the vast majority get lost in the rat race and
| forget what it is that made them choose to work their ass of
| to begin with, but it's not because their ultimate goal (at
| least in the beginning) was to chill at the beach.
|
| IMHO, if that person who was working their ass off was a
| genius and an outlier, then their contributions are a huge
| net benefit to society and we/society should reward and
| applaud them.
|
| However, most people are average or below average, so their
| contributions are extremely unlikely to move the needle. So
| from the point of view of the person chilling on the beach,
| yeah sure, do whatever makes you happy, but as far as real
| accomplishments go, its a wash between them and the non-
| genius hard-worker. Just my opinion! :)
|
| (Writing this as a non-genius average person)
| justapassenger wrote:
| Part of what you're describing can be attributed to lack of
| internet. But other part is just being an outsider that doesn't
| really care that much (and I mean that in totally non offensive
| way - it's just a benefit of being an outsider).
|
| Outrage existed long before internet. Daily tv news,
| newspapers, gossips at work, coworker with totally opposite
| world view, etc, were all great sources of outrage. At smaller
| scale, true, but living without internet doesn't create perfect
| world.
| dhosek wrote:
| My outrage quotient has dropped significantly in the two and
| a half months since I deleted facebook and twitter. Just
| removing those two things from my life has made a measurable
| improvement in my quality of life.
| MrGilbert wrote:
| I deleted my facebook account some years ago. Also, I set
| my Twitter account to private. I use it to be connected to
| some people, and read their stuff. I'm pretty happy.
|
| Also, I have a second account for "open" discussions and
| work-related stuff that I barely use. It would be awesome
| if one could set certain tweets in a locked account to
| "visible for everyone".
| _delirium wrote:
| I found I had to get rid of a decent portion of the news
| too, and news-adjacent comedy shows like Colbert. It's not
| enough to personally not read FB/Twitter, since they have
| gotten so integrated into mainstream media. Maybe 10 years
| ago you could just ignore social media, but by 2018 (when I
| started making an effort to avoid it), you could end up
| seeing thousands of tweets without ever using twitter
| yourself, if you just regularly watched TV news and/or
| current events comedy. Whole portions of these shows turned
| into literally putting a tweet on the screen and then
| talking about the tweet and responses to it. Especially
| Trump tweets and their replies, but not solely those.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| I once did an exercise where I went over every single
| news article on the front page of my prefered online
| paper and asked myself if that was relevant to me and my
| life.
|
| The answer was no to everything single one. That was pre-
| covid, and sometimes the news are relevant, but you can
| mostly do a quick checkup once a week. Prefer something
| in text form that you can scan over.
| ghaff wrote:
| A weekly news magazine was where I got most of my news
| for a long time. The US ones are all pretty bad these
| days; I dropped my Time subscription a few years back
| after having it for decades. The Economist is probably
| the go-to in English these days.
| marlor wrote:
| Getting rid of "newstainment" and 24-hour news programs
| significantly improved the quality and breadth of the
| news I consume.
|
| By just reading a quality daily newspaper and a couple of
| newsmagazines, I'm better informed than when I was a news
| junkie with cable news on in the background and news
| websites refreshing on my phone.
|
| "Breaking news" is broken. Print media, especially weekly
| newsmagazines, have the luxury of time to actually think
| about their coverage and provide adequate research and
| follow-up. Conversely, space is limited, so if it's not
| adding value, it gets chopped.
|
| Live news, on the other hand, needs to alternate between
| being first to report, then filling time until something
| else occurs, all while making whatever is occurring seem
| more important than it really is.
| Gene_Parmesan wrote:
| (This is not addressed directly at you, parent commenter,
| these are just general thoughts.)
|
| I studied journalism in undergrad, and I have never
| understood why people are so drawn to watch these
| national 24hr 'news' channels. During a major crisis,
| sure, but day in and day out? I just don't get it. There
| just isn't that much that happens at a non-personal level
| (personal meaning self-, family-, friend-, work-oriented)
| each day. In terms of staying "up to date," I still am
| not clear on why this is important to do daily at a
| national-focused level, but if it's important to you, it
| can be done in a few minutes by reading a brief recap. If
| you do want a more traditional news cast, PBS News Hour
| is a good one.
|
| But with these 24 hr networks, given how little of import
| happens on an average day, most of the time what you are
| being shown are not facts, but opinions. And these
| networks are all owned by massive, massive megacorps. Not
| sure why anyone is interested in getting drip fed
| opinions that originate, however loosely, from these
| conglomerates.
|
| They try to get you to buy into them by convincing you
| it's important to "stay informed," but never really
| explain why. They play on your desires to be a good
| citizen, to be seen as intelligent, to feel 'serious.' If
| staying informed is important, it's most important at a
| local level, where your real connections can help you
| have a real impact. People are so focused on what all the
| senators tweeted yesterday that they are missing the real
| problems, issues, etc. that they could help address in
| their local communities. In this sense, news might not
| come from media at all -- and here is where social media
| could actually have real value.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > I studied journalism in undergrad, and I have never
| understood why people are so drawn to watch these
| national 24hr 'news' channels.
|
| Because the alternative (other than going out for a walk)
| is watching re-runs of many years old shows or other
| outright crap.
|
| Personally, I like the 24/7 radio news channel of the
| local public broadcaster ("B5 Aktuell") - news and
| information program, but no pop music that was bad
| already when it came out.
| Groxx wrote:
| Honestly, I think it's addiction by design
| (intentionally, or merely A/B tested into existence, end
| result is similar). Emotional swings are impactful, even
| if repeated ones are not very individually memorable, and
| the endless rollercoaster is one way to keep you _looking
| at the rollercoaster_ rather than at e.g. boredom
| elsewhere. Eventually you 're habituated, and looking
| away looks less interesting than this fire that just
| erupted in you-wouldn't-guess-where / it-could-happen-to-
| you.
| ghaff wrote:
| I've also done some journalism but, for many years, my
| primary news source was getting Time Magazine delivered
| to my mailbox plus the evening news every now and then
| along with one of the Sunday morning news programs. That
| was pretty much it.
|
| Today I don't get live TV but I do pretty much get real-
| time news through Twitter, etc.
| roenxi wrote:
| Guessing, but it would make a lot of sense if there was a
| fair number of humans that are just primed to constantly
| look out for threats. If such people exist, they would
| love 24-7 news coverage of bad news even though it makes
| their lives worse.
|
| Following news makes little sense for keeping a person
| informed. There are too many completely conflicting
| sources of news. All the news informs of is what other
| people who watch the news will have opinions on.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _They try to get you to buy into them by convincing you
| it 's important to "stay informed," but never really
| explain why._
|
| The common explanation you hear everywhere, even here on
| HN, is that citizens "staying informed" is the key to an
| effective democracy. While it may be true in the
| abstract, using this as an argument for 24h news - or
| even daily news - is quietly omitting the fact that these
| news sources provide _negative_ information value. Your
| worldview becomes _less_ accurate, not more. Widespread
| addiction to breaking news is thus creating a _less_
| effective democracy.
| [deleted]
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| Which print media do you recommend?
| marlor wrote:
| The Economist is the gold standard, with unbiased,
| quality writing. Brilliant all round. However, it's
| expensive (especially if you prefer print over digital).
| I subscribe on and off.
|
| I also really like Foreign Policy. Despite its name, it's
| not really a specialist publication, just a general
| overview of global current affairs with a bit of a policy
| focus.
|
| The Guardian Weekly has great international coverage. Its
| editorial stance is also less overt than it once was (far
| more measured than the website). There are still
| occasional stories and writers that make my eyes roll,
| but it also covers really interesting global stories I
| don't find anywhere else.
|
| My daily newspaper is the Sydney Morning Herald. I've
| been based in Australia since travel restrictions hit,
| and I'm really happy with the paper. It seems to be just
| as good as it was a decade ago when I was last based
| here.
|
| Contrary to popular opinion, there's plenty of quality
| print journalism out there.
|
| You just need to read an individual paper for a while to
| internalise the house style and (with the notable
| exception of The Economist) get to know the individual
| predilections of each journalist. That level of
| engagement with the paper and its writers is not
| something you get from skimming Google News, but I really
| feel it's at the heart of getting the most from
| journalism.
|
| Just buy a particular paper or newsmagazine for a month
| or two, and see if it's for you. One local/national and
| one with a global focus is all you need. If you find
| them, you'll hopefully be set for years.
| mcgin wrote:
| The Financial Times is my main news source. It seems to
| be the only one that I've found which doesn't have
| sensationalist stories/click baity headlines
| Stupulous wrote:
| Financial journalism really outperforms most media
| sources in terms of picking important stories and telling
| them in an unbiased way.
|
| Maybe their wealthier audience means that they're not
| racing to the bottom for clicks. Maybe the people in
| charge know to run a business that gives people what they
| want without alienating half of potential customers.
| Maybe something else entirely. Whatever it is, it's
| working, and I hope it stays that way.
| lostandbored wrote:
| Agreed. Even Reuters News is high quality in comparison
| to CNN and Fox News.
| [deleted]
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| not OP but I've had a long running subscription to _The
| Economist_ since the early 90ies. One of my favorite
| sections usually glossed over by everyone I know (but I
| 'm weird) is the quality from "Letters to the Editor"
| that are incredibly well selected and often hilarious
| when checked with the original piece that they are
| referring to. The Letters are not my causa primera for
| reading it, but if something so mundane is done with so
| much attention to detail, the rest should also be up to
| my expectation (and it usually is).
|
| Secondly there is also their Tech section which compared
| to politics / economics / finance ..., I can as an
| insider judge its quality. It stands out among the rest
| IMO. I also like the FT for similar reasons.
| 867-5309 wrote:
| >had a long running subscription to The Economist
|
| >their Tech section ... stands out among the rest
|
| this is some hardcore Gell Mann sorcery right here
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| having trouble understanding the reference. would you
| care to elaborate?
| sien wrote:
| To the child sub comment.
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/65213-briefly-stated-
| the-ge...
|
| 867 is either implying that because something you know is
| good you judge the rest likely to be good.
|
| Alternatively they are being sarcastic because they think
| The Economist's tech section is poor.
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| ah, thanks for shedding light.
|
| yes it's my own opinion and I don't consider myself to be
| an authority on these other subjects, so my only tools
| are intuition or trying to piggyback on people I think
| (or was told) are authorities. (but both are blunt tools
| since if I can't judge the subject my trust in others who
| I think know those things is equally questionable)
| 867-5309 wrote:
| on the contrary - I am applauding their following of
| economics AND tech, hence sorcery
| JackFr wrote:
| The obituary was always a worthwhile read as well. It
| might not have been the most prominent person who died
| that week, but always fascinating.
| psychiatrist24 wrote:
| But maybe you are now like the turkey who thinks everything
| is fine, and then it gets eaten at the end of the year. You
| might wake up in Socialism one day, with a mob outside of
| your house wanting to evict you.
| Tokelin wrote:
| But those two services are not the internet as a whole. The
| internet is just the medium, unfortunately it has been
| taken over by a handful of private organisations.
| ChrisRR wrote:
| I completely agree. My anxiety has been so much better
| since I stopped reading the news, facebook and twitter.
|
| I don't really need a constant drip feed of all the
| terrible things going on in the world. Most of it doesn't
| affect me, and only serves to make me feel worse about
| humanity
| lmm wrote:
| Did you try just... not following the outrage parts? Not
| getting outraged? If you want to spend more time connecting
| with people you care about, getting rid of facebook feels
| like throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
| dkarl wrote:
| I found that didn't work at all with Facebook and only
| works with Twitter by being _very_ selective. But I think
| that is intrinsic to Twitter, and not only for outrage
| reasons. I unfollow lots of interesting and smart people
| because they add too much to my feed. If I follow someone
| for technical content and half their tweets end up being
| about music or chit-chat with their friends or drama in
| their part of the industry, I unfollow them to get that
| material out of my feed. Even if everything they tweet is
| interesting, if they tweet a lot, I unfollow them.
|
| > If you want to spend more time connecting with people
| you care about, getting rid of facebook feels like
| throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
|
| Sadly, lots of people I care about think it's a moral
| imperative to broadcast their political position on
| Facebook on every issue of the day. The people I connect
| with are skewed pretty heavily towards my own point of
| view, but that doesn't make it any less corrosive to read
| what they have to say. Facebook is just too emotionally
| taxing to follow. (Using Facebook's tools to curate my
| feed just reminds me how much power I'm giving up to
| them, which is also depressing.)
|
| I feel so much better with Facebook out of my life. I
| have the app installed on my phone in case somebody from
| twenty years ago wants to look me up and message me.
| That's all it's good for.
| StanislavPetrov wrote:
| That's like saying you should swim in the ocean because
| you like fish, but just ignore the water. There are
| numerous ways to connect with people you care about that
| don't involve a corporate mediator (and many of them are
| much more fulfilling than Facebook!).
| scottious wrote:
| anecdotally, I felt like my only option was to throw the
| baby out with the bathwater. It was too hard to avoid the
| outrage. Everybody has that childhood friend who won't
| stop posting BS conspiracy theories or that aunt who
| thinks the world is ending. Do I unfollow these people?
| if so, what's the point of it all?
|
| I only ever posted positive things like videos of me
| playing piano and only tried to interact with others in a
| positive way but I found myself becoming more and more
| angry over time so I just quit the whole thing and never
| looked back.
| swayvil wrote:
| Given that outrage is very attractive. And facebook aims
| to attract you. It's safe to say that they will slip in
| outrage every chance they get.
| alnorth wrote:
| The problem is that whoever you follow (whether they're
| friends, family or just interesting people) they ARE
| following the outrage parts.
|
| And of course there's the "trending" sidebars, and ads
| and other stuff that gets injected into your timeline
| without you asking for it.
|
| So things bleed in no matter how careful you are. The
| platforms are designed to drag you in and outrage you.
| Trying to avoid that is a constant battle - and you're
| going to give in to it from time to time.
| lmm wrote:
| The platforms are designed to show you more of what you
| engage with. I can understand that for people who are
| addicted to outrage-bait, blocking might be the only way
| to break out of that, but if you engage with the parts
| you want to see more of and not with the parts you don't,
| facebook learns pretty quickly, IME.
| everdrive wrote:
| I don't know that I agree with this, but even if we
| assume it's 100% true, this is still a problem given
| Facebook's addictive nature. Practically speaking, most
| people don't have the impulse control to pull themselves
| away from mindless, addictive content. And I don't think
| it's a huge surprise that a lot of the people who have
| gone down the Facebook rabbit hole are older. Less tech
| savvy, and perhaps not as sharp as they were at the
| height of their lives.
| gumby wrote:
| Those platforms _want_ your attention so they will show
| you more of what you "engage" (tricky buzzword) with,
| occasionally injecting a bit of noise to try to keep you
| from getting bored. This is in fact what many critics
| complain about yet like.
|
| I just tuned FB to show me stuff I wanted by scrolling
| past stuff I didn't, "liking" stuff I did/do, and
| clicking through to read/respond to comments. It's mostly
| friend&family updates, apolitical jokes, animal pics and
| other anodyne stuff fun to see.
|
| And I block ppl who are on the outrage train, typically
| just for the 30-day automatic cool down and FB gets the
| message.
|
| It's my attention and I don't have to give it to people.
| LightG wrote:
| Exactly this.
|
| My current move is to delete Facebook completely (well,
| deleted that years ago). I just didn't find as much value
| there as elsewhere on the internet. And the psychological
| cost wasn't worth the little value there was there. So,
| complete deletion.
|
| Twitter, I've deleted the mobile app and I follow no one.
| I have a separate list of profiles I find interesting. I
| have to physically go to that list and click on their
| profiles.
|
| This keeps me out of 90% of the drama and into 90% of the
| worthwhile content.
|
| It's hard to not look at "trending" but I'm trying. I
| wish there was a way to turn off "trending" and
| "timelines" completely.
|
| End result: hugely more productive and psychologically
| lighter.
| abnry wrote:
| > Twitter, I've deleted the mobile app and I follow no
| one. I have a separate list of profiles I find
| interesting. I have to physically go to that list and
| click on their profiles.
|
| Interestingly, this is the same solution I came to with
| Twitter, except I don't even keep a list of profiles, I
| just navigate based on memory and auto-complete in the
| address bar.
| dbetteridge wrote:
| I use
|
| twitter.com##section div[aria-label="Timeline: Trending
| now"]
|
| In Ublock - origin rules to hide the trending sidebar
| mkr-hn wrote:
| Better: https://github.com/insin/tweak-new-twitter
|
| This will benefit from updates from the author whenever
| Twitter tries to foil blocking. It comes with a variety
| of tweaks like a separate timeline for retweets and
| forcing the latest timeline.
| LightG wrote:
| Oh my gosh, that's beautiful. Thanks.
| teucris wrote:
| > Move retweets to a separate Retweets timeline, or hide
| them entirely
|
| This alone completely changes Twitter for me. Making
| Twitter mostly original content? Sign me up.
| pc86 wrote:
| This is fantastic.
| dbetteridge wrote:
| well thats handy
|
| Thanks!
| rorykoehler wrote:
| Twitter provides some pretty decent tools for curating
| your feed
| spicybright wrote:
| That's why I don't do social media or follow other
| people's social media. If I want to connect with them
| texting, phone calls, zoom is much better instead of
| trying to get the same from online outrage machines.
| tome wrote:
| This doesn't address all the issues you raise, but my
| hack to deal with the Twitter sidebar is to set it to a
| language and region I don't understand.
|
| 1. Click "Show more" at the bottom of "What's happening"
|
| 2. Click the "settings cog" at the top of the page
|
| 3. Uncheck "Show content in this location"
|
| 4. Click "Explore locations" and choose a location whose
| language you can't read and you know nothing about.
|
| And to avoid outrage leaking to me via people who end up
| in my main feed I simply aggressively mute pretty much
| anyone who talks about politics or similar. Sure, I
| therefore lack their signal but avoiding their noise more
| than makes up for that.
| dbetteridge wrote:
| I use
|
| twitter.com##section div[aria-label="Timeline: Trending
| now"]
|
| In Ublock - origin rules to hide the trending sidebar
| monkey_monkey wrote:
| You can use a 3rd party client (I use Tweetbot) to go
| back to a chronologically ordered list of tweets, with no
| promoted tweets, no sidebar, you have to explicitly click
| to find trending topics.
|
| You can also keywords (which I think you can do with the
| Twitter app as well) for more granular curation.
|
| I think solutions like this allow one to benefit from
| Twitter without paying the heavy price that their shitty
| engagement tactics demand.
| lizknope wrote:
| I actually tried facebook for a month with other windows
| covering up the "trending" sidebar. It was a little
| better but the ads in the main area still annoyed me.
|
| Then I started unfriending people that just posted stuff
| that annoyed me.
|
| Then I realized after 3 days there was literally no new
| posts.
|
| Then I just deleted facebook.
|
| I don't miss it at all.
|
| I've got multiple group chats with friends that I like.
| People post funny and interesting stuff there and we talk
| about it without having to deal with what someone's crazy
| uncle thinks about the topic.
| dr-detroit wrote:
| What other parts are there? The corporate shilling? The
| shameless sex app aspect? Or just the fact that ABC news
| reported faceblog is just a CIA utility for tracking
| simpletons?
| caturopath wrote:
| > Did you try just... Not getting outraged?
|
| Yes, they did it by leaving Facebook and Twitter.
|
| That seems like the most obvious strategy for effecting
| this change.
|
| I don't really understand the line of thinking that
| somehow you have to will yourself into things rather than
| changing your environment. I think it misses how
| predictable peoples' reactions to things really are.
| rhacker wrote:
| What if I never had facebook? Does the baby exist? Should
| I GET facebook now?
| ricardobayes wrote:
| It's impossible to avoid even in groups, because for each
| fb post the algorithm chooses the top 2-3 comments to
| show. And it will be ones which have the most interaction
| (replies, emojis). And the ones who outrage will have the
| most interaction thus will be shown.
| caturopath wrote:
| FWIW, I use https://socialfixer.com/ to hide politics and
| COVID posts.
|
| There's not much facebook left over, but oh well.
| busterarm wrote:
| Here's the guy telling everyone they're using heroin
| wrong and the fact that it destroys their life is their
| problem.
|
| No, guy. The concensus is growing around social media
| being really fucking toxic.
| silverfox17 wrote:
| Just don't follow toxic sources, that's all he's
| advocating. If someone's sharing memes from a crazy
| political page, either block that page or remove the
| friend.
|
| People say social media like Facebook is toxic for the
| most part because they only deal with toxic people.
| mud_dauber wrote:
| Agreed. My FB & TW timelines are 95% non-toxic b/c I
| muted those people out of my life. The same with news
| feeds.
|
| It's sufficiently tranquil that my wife now asks to read
| my feeds. It just took some filter cycles to get there.
| debaserab2 wrote:
| That's not "not following toxic sources" that's actively
| pruning them from your connections.
|
| Why participate in that in the first place when toxicity
| grows there like a weed?
| jhbadger wrote:
| The problem is that many of these "toxic people" are
| one's relatives that you can't just easily cut out of
| your life. Before social media, when they started on a
| racist rant or something you could get them to change the
| topic to sports or something, but these days they get
| encouragement in their extreme views from lots of other
| people they would have never met in real life.
| tclancy wrote:
| It doesn't work that way. I pruned both Twitter and
| Facebook intentionally in the way you suggest and it
| became pretty clear (or maybe it's my biases) that both
| run on outrage. Facebook would insist on bringing
| arguments to the top of my feed as best it could. As an
| example, I am friends with a regional sportswriter on FB
| and he had a post asking something sports/ politics
| related. It generated about 50 responses, so FB condenses
| that into 2-3 replies and then offers to let you click to
| see more. Amazingly, the part it decided to call out was
| the one argument in the 50 comment thread. Controversy
| and upset are what drives engagement in social media.
| toss1 wrote:
| IDK about FB, I always avoided it like a toxic plague.
|
| But on Twitter, there seem to still be work-arounds. I
| use lists set to Private, curated for specific experts on
| particular topics, and many top and/or obscure experts
| post regularly.
|
| This provides a reasonably straightforward chronological
| feed, curated to my interest, with well-tuned news and
| links to key analysis. Just NEVER use the main Home feed
| (which they do push on you).
|
| IDK how long that feature will stay unpolluted by toxic
| algorithms, but Jack does seem a bit less determined than
| Zuck to pollute society.
| agumonkey wrote:
| He has a point, partially.. I used to use twitter, but
| naturally curating it with only funny or smart thinkers
| and creators. My view was mostly impressive tech, art or
| coding (one dude made fluid simulation in gl shaders). It
| was peaceful.
|
| Thing is, you're still close to the toxic web you
| regularly step into it .. and that's why i'm banned from
| twitter now.
| busterarm wrote:
| These apps are still _by design_ trying to capture the
| maximum amount of your attention.
|
| That deserves every ounce of hostility that we can
| muster. And then some.
|
| They are parasites. It doesn't matter if you "made it
| work for you".
| agumonkey wrote:
| Please don't be crazy. I don't like the current web
| either but it's important to be objective and calm.
| busterarm wrote:
| First of all, I am calm.
|
| Second of all, there's nothing crazy about what I said.
| By their own admission they've designed the apps to be
| addictive.
|
| Would you tell your friends "go ahead, shoot up. have a
| great time!"? Would you tell your family? What I think is
| crazy is that we tolerate companies that make products
| like this.
|
| I guess greed is a powerful force.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Yes it's been shown that they're tricking people into
| addiction. I wasn't responding to the arguments more
| about the 'every ounce of hostility'. Their marketing
| strategies are sad[0], but you seemed to be all-in in a
| war against them which I think is misguided. Sorry if
| crazy was too strong of a word, I didn't meant it as a
| personal insult. I believe hostility and reaction is the
| wrong tool for this issue.. let's simply quit and invite
| others to do others to do so.
|
| [0] we're still having deadly cigarettes sold everywhere
| you know..
| busterarm wrote:
| Isn't it because of the effects we've seen from nicotine
| and alcohol that we should be so vigilant about
| mainstreaming new vices in society?
| snerbles wrote:
| The poster may be impassioned, but characterizing a hot
| take as "crazy" looks like a bad faith argument.
| agumonkey wrote:
| I may have read it with the wrong tone.
| rhacker wrote:
| If I stepped out of 1980 and into 2021 and saw facebook
| and cell phones and people looking down the privacy
| nightmare. It is totally fucking batshit crazy.
|
| We're all Slowly Boiled Frogs.
| [deleted]
| samlevine wrote:
| Unfortunately, the people that I care about mostly want
| to talk about what they're outraged about.
| tw04 wrote:
| I have a facebook account I rarely if ever login to
| unless it's something school related. When I do, without
| fail I see someone I would otherwise get along with
| posting some ridiculous, easily disproven nonsense about
| _insert scaremongering of the day_. Every now and again I
| 'll respond with a link to a factcheck which inevitably
| upsets the person who is angry someone isn't reinforcing
| the echo chamber.
|
| Then I promptly close it and remember that's why I don't
| even bother. Facebook's entire engagement strategy has
| become outrage and fear. It's what keeps people the most
| engaged and that's literally the only metric they care
| about.
|
| I truly believe if Zuck had the option of nuking a third
| world country to make another billion or solve world
| peace and Facebook goes away entirely, he'd nuke the
| country without a second thought. Everything about him
| strikes me as a sociopath with little to no regard for
| mankind outside of his personal bubble.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _I truly believe if Zuck had the option of nuking a
| third world country to make another billion or solve
| world peace and Facebook goes away entirely, he 'd nuke
| the country without a second thought._
|
| You should check these articles out, they were written in
| 2018[1][2] and then in 2020[3].
|
| [1]
| https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-
| facebo...
|
| [2]
| https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/06/technology/myanmar-
| facebo...
|
| [3] https://time.com/5880118/myanmar-rohingya-genocide-
| facebook-...
| matwood wrote:
| > Not getting outraged?
|
| This mostly works for me for Twitter. FB is just garbage
| so I haven't been on it in months. I don't need to delete
| it though, I just stopped going.
|
| HN for the most part is still unique. Even when I see a
| comment I disagree with, most of the time it's
| articulated well and I can see their point. There are
| discussions that can happen.
|
| FB is/was just nonsense, and Twitter is more
| comedy/entertainment than anything.
| Swenrekcah wrote:
| I know this is frowned upon here but:
|
| Nice try Mark
| kreeben wrote:
| First rule of HN: don't astroturf.
|
| Second rule of HN: don't call out people who you think
| are astroturfing.
|
| Third rule: astroturf.
| morelisp wrote:
| Nice try Paul.
| ricardobayes wrote:
| Just the term 'astroturf' and the meaning behind it makes
| me feel like an ancient roman 5 years before the collapse
| of the roman empire.
| anovikov wrote:
| I can only second it. Deleting Facebook 3.5 years ago made
| me so, so much happier!
| gberger wrote:
| I'm curious, you mention "outrage quotient" and "measurable
| improvement".
|
| How do you measure outrage?
| throwawayffffas wrote:
| I would guess, minutes of day being outraged.
| TorKlingberg wrote:
| This is very true. You get the same thing with people who
| live in Japan for a bit and declare that the political
| climate there is so much better. Eh, no, you just can't read
| the newspapers.
| drdeadringer wrote:
| > Outrage existed long before internet
|
| I recall the film 'Network' with its "I'm mad as hell and I'm
| not going to take this anymore" thread.
|
| Among other messages.
| donpott wrote:
| And politicians/powerful people doing and saying outrageous
| things predates the Internet by far. The fact that now we
| _can_ be informed about it if we so choose is nothing but a
| blessing from my perspective.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| I would have agreed before getting rid of Facebook in 2016.
|
| Two key things - a power force for stealing my attention is
| gone, and I've dumped faux friends who are really just old
| acquaintances that felt more intimate because I got to see
| them on Facebook.
|
| Instead, I actually talk to people who are here.
| random5634 wrote:
| I'm not disagreeing but a couple of things.
|
| - When living and interacting locally I think folks moderate
| their views a bit - call it "politeness"?
|
| - Views locally are somewhat more homogenized?
|
| - For better and worse, I'm not sure you'd last that long in
| Caribbean if you were just a twitter bomb thrower, even if
| justified - my impression was even things like whistleblowing
| would not be very well received (ie, if I'd complained about
| various govt officials not being at their desks when they
| should have been - it wouldn't have come over well). This may
| be wrong and certainly has changed as folks become more aware
| of what should and shouldn't happen.
| simias wrote:
| Most definitely. I live as an expat in a foreign country and
| while I use the internet a lot and even speak the local
| language, I still feel very disconnected from the celebrity
| and political drama.
|
| I find it very beneficial, and it definitely helps broaden
| you general outlook on these things. I used to follow the
| news pretty closely, now I just get the headlines once a day
| and move on with my life.
|
| But as always it's a rather privileged position. I'm a high-
| wage childless white dude with a French passport, I don't
| have a lot to fear from politics. If things go bad here for
| some reason I can just move somewhere else, a luxury the vast
| majority of human beings don't have.
|
| Having the possibility not to care is a luxury, in a way.
| HenryBemis wrote:
| > I still feel very disconnected from the celebrity and
| political drama
|
| I try to never bother with 'celebrities'. They are
| glorified nothings. Actor X is using phone from ABC
| company, only because they paid him to pose holding one.
| Not because it has _anti-matter /matter fusion technology_.
| Also most celebrity events do not affect any of our lives.
| They divorce? pity.. but still.. don't care. Model X went
| to a party? good for her (wear a mask!) but still.. don't
| care.
|
| > Having the possibility not to care is a luxury, in a way.
|
| I remember the Minimalists once said " _most crises, aren
| 't_". There is wisdom in that phrase. Lack of immediate
| exposure to 'news', filters out most of the non-crises and
| the unecessary drama. The important news will stick around
| after 48 hours/days/weeks (Sollarwinds, unemployment rise,
| COVID, a major shift in political events, etc.)
|
| With that said, a quick scroll through a couple of news-
| worthy outelets (BYOsite) will give you all the info within
| 60seconds, and will give _you_ the opportunity to seek out
| more - without the spammy exposure of TV /Radio.
| slg wrote:
| Life is certainly less stressful if you ignore all the terrible
| things... unless a terrible thing happens to you and everyone
| ignores you.
| ornornor wrote:
| Otoh 99% (exaggeration for emphasis but not that far off if
| you think about it) of what happens in the "news" is totally
| irrelevant to you and your life beyond the initial outrage it
| provokes. You have virtually no impact on preventing or
| influencing the event and it has no impact on you whatsoever.
| War in Africa again? It's sad to think about and outrageous
| how some scummy warlords terrorize the local population, but
| what's the impact on your life? Tsunami in Asia? Terrible for
| all the death but no impact on your daily life. Corruption in
| Europe again? Revolting but... all these things just add to
| your overall unhappiness and stress but really have no
| bearing on your actual day to day life. So why even bother?
| Not too mention that nedia and news outlets can have a hidden
| agenda they're pushing either because the entity that owns
| them wants to promote a particular view of the world or
| because they want people to look away from something else.
| amelius wrote:
| > 99% (...) of what happens in the "news" is totally
| irrelevant to you and your life beyond the initial outrage
| it provokes.
|
| Just like voting has almost zero effect. However, is not
| voting wise?
|
| In what direction would society move if nobody watched the
| news?
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| The society would be mich better off. I find your
| equation of "news is like voting" appauling. News has
| almost no informational value like covering Russel Brand
| when he was running around telling people not to vote.
|
| We need more people voting and speaking to their
| representatives, and fewer people outraged about
| something some random brainless celebtrity said.
| slg wrote:
| Why are so many people in this thread equating news with
| celebrity or outrage culture? News is about learning and
| understanding current events. If you don't understand
| current events, you can't be an educated voter. If you
| have a societal obligation to vote, you have a societal
| obligation to follow the news at the very least whenever
| there is an election in your area and those occur much
| more frequently than once every 2 or 4 years.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| People equate news with celebrities and outrage because
| that's what 80% of airtime is dedicated to.
|
| If you want to be educated voter, pick any journal or
| periodical like The Economist or The New European. Their
| journalism will actually cover an issue in some depth,
| from whatever is their biased perspective.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Weird, I watch PBS and the News Hour, and I can't
| remember the last time in the past 5 years that I heard
| about celebrities or "outrage" on my TV.
| slg wrote:
| > pick any journal or periodical like The Economist or
| The New European
|
| But those are news too. Why are we judging news based off
| the worst examples? If you have a problem with the news
| you are consuming, find some other source. Don't write
| off all news consumption as bad.
| robinj6 wrote:
| Now that it has become such a media item, how many
| shooters in the past few years do you believe had a
| partial motive in a near certainty they would achieve
| broad recognition in their otherwise meaningless and
| miserable lives? When you read the news and Wikipedia on
| the latest shooter, you're contributing to future
| shooters in about the same magnitude as being a single
| voter.
| ornornor wrote:
| That's assuming you can trust the news to be impartial
| and unbiased which they rarely are, because most media is
| owned by a few oligarchs or entities who have a specific
| agenda to push.
|
| As for voting, I find these tools that ask you questions
| and tell you which candidates/parties best match your
| beliefs to be enough to know how to cast my vote. Not
| that it really matters, as you've said but it still lets
| me do my civic duty without the years of stress and
| anxiety in-between elections and during the elected's
| mandate. I'll leave it up to other to get needlessly
| outraged by following the news.
| psychiatrist24 wrote:
| I don't trust the news, but on FB and Twitter I can
| select my own sources. Doesn't mean I automatically trust
| them, but at least I can get a multitude of perspectives
| and background information that the news omits.
| karaterobot wrote:
| This is a false dichotomy. You don't have to either ignore
| all terrible things, or spend all your time paying attention
| to them.
| sammalloy wrote:
| In my opinion, it isn't about ignoring anything. It's about
| moderating our reaction to things such that "outrage"
| dissipates in the face of more reflective, sustained modes of
| thought. The 24/7 news cycle, which is often based on
| infotainment, doesn't allow time for contemplation of ideas,
| just emotions.
| simion314 wrote:
| I am not from US , so please don't try to interpret my
| comment as some US politic stuff.
|
| I do not watch or read news daily, so when I went in a
| vacation at the hotel I had nothing else better to do then
| open the TV. There was some big outrage that the president
| mumbled something racist(he was inside a car and people were
| lips reading) - again not in US. I realized what I was
| missing by not watching TV, I am ignoring all the useless
| drama. The other part of the news that is not politics is
| also mostly irrelevant crap.
|
| The thing is that there is almost nothing we can do as
| individuals, elections are 4 years apart and sometimes people
| organize and manage to change the prime minister with big
| protests but that is when something so big happened that even
| I knew about it.
|
| What could work much better is a weekly summary that ignores
| things that happened this week, so it will be like a filter
| for minor stuff and all the events reported would have been
| better digested and all involved parties would have had the
| time to respond.
|
| There are some rare events that should not be ignored, and
| this are large enough that will surface, a local example is
| this incident that eventualy caused protests, some
| resignations but probably nothing actually major changed to
| improve safety(unfortunately we have a few horrible incidents
| related with fire)
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colectiv_nightclub_fire
|
| The opposite of that I do would be me having to read or watch
| 3 different reports on same maybe relevant stuff and decide
| what is my favorite interpretation.
|
| Add on top of that the propaganda by US to start their wars
| by fabricating stuff, now when I read some report about 1
| million people in camps in China I will always have a doubt
| the numbers and facts are real, or the interview with persons
| could be fabricated, so with news from far away is double
| pointless to be on top daily, is nothing you can do about it
| today so it can wait a week and you can never be sure it is
| not manipulation.
| robinj6 wrote:
| Johannesburg, relatively speaking, is similar to this. People
| will use the Internet in business parks to do their jobs, but
| you don't see people walking around staring at their phones.
| People use WhatsApp to curb high talk and text rates, but that
| is a lions share of what phones are used for. It feels very
| similar to 90s America technologically and it's strangely
| relieving.
| irrational wrote:
| Do all phone calls (even from a landline) go over the Internet at
| some point these days? If you make phone calls, can it be said
| that you do use the Internet?
| siltpotato wrote:
| If you ride the bus, it's not the answer people are looking for
| when they awkwardly phrase the question if you have a car as
| "do you use a vehicle?"
| throwawgler87 wrote:
| Nitpick: In the table where they break it down by category, it
| seems implied what percentage of each demographic says they don't
| use the internet (e.g. 25% of people 65+), with no mention of
| _what fraction of non-internet-users are 65+_. Both numbers would
| be interesting!
| boring_twenties wrote:
| I've been using the Internet since 1992-3. Lately I'm feeling
| more and more like these 7% have the right idea.
| haltingproblem wrote:
| I often think of what life would be without using the internet.
| Observing a electronics sabbath usually on sat, seems like a
| good idea. Not Jewish but feel that the Rabbis of old were on
| to something.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Computers without the internet were better in someways.
|
| Leaving the internet behind doesn't mean living without
| technology.
| betwixthewires wrote:
| I'm curious to know in what ways you mean.
| tartoran wrote:
| No internet means fewer distractions and one can do deep
| work, but this is not permanent. Internet is good but in
| moderation, too much of it and it starts consuming us.
| behringer wrote:
| Before the internet, If you wanted to use computers it
| was to be crafting, not memeing.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Before the internet bbs boards existed. Calling a board
| was a different experience.
|
| Playing games on computers didn't require an internet
| connection. Often you traded disks.
|
| Having no internet opens up the possibilities the
| computer can do. You start exploring and using more of
| it.
| bradlys wrote:
| As someone who dealt with not having internet on a
| computer before, I'd say it's pretty limiting these days.
| You can do stuff but only if you know how to do stuff to
| begin with. And the software preloaded on some OSes isn't
| exactly enough to keep you entertained for eternity.
|
| If you don't know how to do things then not having
| internet is pretty limiting. After all, most software out
| there doesn't come with robust documentation built in.
| It's been all online for a while.
|
| You might be idolizing your younger years when there were
| quite a few pain points that you're glossing over. If you
| don't like certain parts of the internet then don't visit
| them. It's not like you're forced to be on social media.
| It's clear from people I meet on forums that they don't
| go almost anywhere else but that forum...
| ipaddr wrote:
| Only expensive software came with instruction manuals
| (embedded instructions weren't a thing) but when they did
| they were leather bound. You really had to figure things
| out yourself.
|
| Let's say you had a c64. You have no software installed
| so you have to type in a program or possible load one
| from a disk. Completely different mindset.
|
| Fast forward years and you have lan doom parties.
| Everyone goes to a store and plays on a hardwired
| network.
|
| The internet is great.. there is life outside of it if it
| disappeared.
| regextegrity wrote:
| Why not just turn off your router? Lightbulbs and
| refrigerators are surprisingly useful
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| Lightbulbs and refrigerators don't contain electronics. I
| mean, modern LED lightbulbs contain some primitive
| electronics, but basic refrigerators do not.
|
| By "electronics", the GP means consumer electronic devices
| like computers, televisions, and smartphones.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| > Lightbulbs and refrigerators don't contain electronics.
|
| > By "electronics", the GP means consumer electronic
| devices like computers,
|
| Have you looked at refrigerators lately? "Smart" ones are
| very common and even the cheapest ones basically all use
| electronics to control the temperature and the cooling
| cycle. Nothing sophisticated, yes, but if LEDs count,
| these definitely do, as well.
| [deleted]
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| That's why I said _basic_ refrigerators, which still have
| compressors controlled by an analogue thermostat. Like
| the kind you find in a typical cheap rental apartment.
| Refrigerators are one of those appliances that really do
| not benefit much from "smart" technology. And LEDs don't
| count; that's my point.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| Fair enough. When LEDs don't count, though, I think it's
| kinda hard to draw a line - do radios count? Clocks?
| Amplifiers? Vacuum tube amplifiers?
|
| But I agree with your general point.
| gh-throw wrote:
| You'll find normal room lights obnoxiously bright and
| wonder what the hell we're thinking if you try exclusively
| candles or very, very dim handheld lights/lanterns after
| sundown for a while (think, medium-bright night lights at
| the very brightest, and even that's kinda too bright) and
| entirely avoid glowing screens. Might find the insomnia or
| night-owl tendencies that're "just how you are" disappear
| in a hurry, too. Go figure, if it's not actually dark and
| there's an incredible amount of flashy entertainment on tap
| it's really hard to sleep like you're supposed to. Wonder
| why we have problems with that, as a society. Guess we'll
| need a whole cottage industry of books & magazine articles
| to mis-explain it.
| swiley wrote:
| I've gone weeks with no lights. IMO between the screen
| backlights and occasional use of a flashlight they're not
| only unnecessary, they're obnoxious.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| I try to do this for the last week of every month. I don't
| turn off the router because I'm not going to exclude myself
| from things like Discord with friends, facetime with my Mom,
| or paying bills with my laptop instead of my phone. But
| anything non-essential is off limits.
|
| It was certainly hard to keep this up in 2020 though, I
| pretty much dropped the habit from April to December
| neatze wrote:
| I would be such an idiot (in some but not all contexts),
| highly doubt would learn how to write, let alone basic
| mathematics, or programming, scientific method would have no
| meaning in my life, if it not where for the internet.
| mabbo wrote:
| Online since '94. My first thought: "Those lucky bastards"
| gh-throw wrote:
| I'm expecting the only thing that'll keep me on it in old age
| is VR chats with the grandkids or whatever. The rest of it's
| not worth the money, except that it's _de facto_ required for
| work and (for the kids) school these days.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| I don't think you can generalize the internet to be bad. That's
| like saying processed food is bad: Yes, we would not have the
| obesity problems we have now without them, but neither would we
| have been able to build our civilization as is or be able to be
| as well nourished as we are.
|
| The direction the net is currently going looks a bit worrying,
| I definitely agree. But I would not want to miss all the
| awesome advantages it brings.
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| This is exactly the same criticism of Luddism. And equally
| right and wrong.
| [deleted]
| akiselev wrote:
| Processed food became a problem at the same point that the
| internet did: when we sacrificed everything at the altar of
| almighty profit.
|
| Two hundred years ago, we processed food to survive the
| winter, now we do it to make a few extra bucks from each ton
| of corn and wheat.
| mirrorlake wrote:
| This decade is the time to engage in a public discourse about
| what we want from our devices. Really sit back and think
| about what makes us happy. Hardware and software design can
| begin to nudge us toward some healthier, happier ideals. One
| small example: the incorporation of blue-blocking modes
| (f.lux, night shift, etc.) for night time usage. Some people
| love the addition of time limits that ensure they don't use
| apps too much.
|
| I am optimistic that the best social media sites have yet to
| be designed--rather than optimizing to squeeze the most
| engagement, ad dollars, or whatever, I like to imagine
| algorithms that seek to encourage pro-social behavior,
| friendliness, happiness, fun, healthy habits. We may discover
| that Twitter and Facebook are fundamentally incapable of
| doing these things as well as their future replacement,
| whatever that may be.
| boring_twenties wrote:
| Luckily I don't need to generalize the Internet to be good or
| bad, I only need to determine whether the good it brings to
| my life personally outweighs the bad.
|
| I don't have an exact answer to that, but what I do know for
| sure is that the good has been on a downward trajectory, and
| the bad on an even steeper upward one, for years. Even if
| they haven't actually crossed yet, it seems only a matter of
| time before they will.
| fallingknife wrote:
| Yeah, it got me thinking about this blog post I read a long
| time ago.
|
| https://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/netslum/
| boring_twenties wrote:
| That was amusing, but the linked "25,000 word screed
| sketching the transformation of the Internet from an open
| network of peers to a locked-down medium for delivering
| commercial content to passive consumers" [1] was even more
| interesting. From 2003, no less!
|
| [1] https://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/digital-imprimatur/
| fallingknife wrote:
| Yeah, I remember reading this back in high school too!
| Interesting that he got the concept (loss of anonymity and
| micropayment) right, but the mechanism wrong. Instead it
| was all done by selling your data to 3rd parties. IMO much
| worse even than what the author proposed.
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| My uncle-in-law. Basically a retired farmer. He has a cell phone
| but I think just uses it as a phone. He hand writes letters.
| AFAIK he has no use for the internet.
| seppin wrote:
| The poor, the old, the young. A lot of people that aren't adults
| have no use for the internet.
| challengly wrote:
| The happiest Americans.
| m80N wrote:
| https://www.google.com
| dustinmoris wrote:
| > 7% of Americans don't use the internet. Who are they?
|
| The happy ones.
| creyes12345 wrote:
| My mom does not use the internet. She is 87. We've tried to teach
| her to use email. Once you explain the process at her level of
| technology, you realize how complicated to use it really is.
| throwaway823882 wrote:
| As soon as I can find myself a stable career that does not
| involve the internet, I'm throwing away my computer and
| smartphone.
| zulban wrote:
| I wonder how clearly the survey defined "internet" for
| respondents. I can see a lot of people thinking they don't use
| it, but they do. Like the many worthless AOL subscriptions that
| still haven't been cancelled.
| fulafel wrote:
| An interesting numeber would be the percentage of people who are
| stuck behind a NAT and can't host their own minecraft servers,
| remote desktop, or whatnot without having the technical expertise
| to configure manual port forwarding and such.
|
| The Redecentralize movement I think tries to shift the use of the
| Internet to a healthier direction both socially and technically.
| zeb88 wrote:
| I envy them.
| chriszhang wrote:
| I wish I could limit the use of Internet to 1 hour per day. Like
| the olden days in the early days of internet.
|
| Internet was given in our university for only 1 hour per day. It
| was possible to live in this manner even when I used to do
| programming. All programming documentation was available as PDFs
| or downloadable copies. I remember the MSDN documentation for C++
| could be kept on the local machine. For Python I used to keep a
| PDF copy of the tutorial and reference i think.
|
| These days I don't know anymore if that style of working will
| still work. Software has become so complex and error messages
| have become so many and so complex that I think we need access to
| internet all the time while programming. To see resolution to
| strange errors in Stack Overflow or on GitHub issues.
|
| I wish all software developers did not assume that I am connected
| to the Internet all the time. It will be good if we can have a
| world where local-first internet-optional style of programming is
| still there.
| aimor wrote:
| I often do work without direct internet access and it's painful
| at times. PDF documentation is wonderful, but when that's not
| available I sometimes save entire websites. Other useful
| things: dictionary, thesaurus, encyclopedia, world maps,
| reference books. It was surprisingly difficult to find a free
| dictionary file.
|
| Overall it's not very different, just inconvenient at times,
| and the lack of distractions is nice. I echo your wish for
| local-first programming.
| GloriousKoji wrote:
| At the beginning of lockdown last year I thought it would be
| a fun projects to build a doomsday-type local internet. Just
| a raspberry pi with it's own AP hosting various offline
| version of reference websites.
|
| I thought it would be pretty low effort: maybe a few scripts
| to crawl some websites and then a few scripts to spit out
| html. I never got passed acquiring all the references. Most
| of the available stuff is from over 10 years ago. Wikipedia's
| convenient snapshot are from 2008, the dictionary files I
| found seemed to be based on Merriam Webster from 2009 and I
| couldn't find a good reference for scientific unit
| conversions just to name a few.
|
| In the end I shelved it since it was going to be much more
| than quick project. But I must say that i'm impressed with
| Gutenberg project on how they provide an option to download
| all their books.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Infants and toddlers make a big part
| gaius_baltar wrote:
| And prisoners. USA has a lot of them.
| xen2xen1 wrote:
| Who says prisoners don't have internet access? You'd be
| surprised how many jail pods have a couple of Ipads you pay
| by the minute to use.
| lepton wrote:
| No, it's % of adults.
| [deleted]
| LatteLazy wrote:
| 16% cannot drive
|
| 8% cannot speak English (8% of over 5s).
|
| I'd say 93% is 100% in this case...
| oytis wrote:
| Would be pretty interesting to learn more about that tiny
| fraction that are urban, educated, young, and well paid.
| thorin wrote:
| My mum had never used the internet by herself, she's 81. My dad
| occasionally uses email if I send him photos of the kids (maybe a
| couple of times a month). He might use a web page to book a hotel
| a few times a year. That's it. I'm pretty sure he isn't "missing
| out" as such. They are both active and fit and have hobbies and
| friends around the country that they visit normally.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| They are probably the happiest Americans there are. It's
| unfortunate that Gen Z and beyond won't know a life before
| ubiquitous mobile Internet.
| sequoia wrote:
| This sounds like a dream to be honest.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-04-07 23:03 UTC)