[HN Gopher] Negativity drives online news consumption
___________________________________________________________________
Negativity drives online news consumption
Author : azefiel
Score : 560 points
Date : 2023-03-17 14:29 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
| initramfs wrote:
| A questionable headline- does it frame and try to link negativity
| with news, or choose this proposition because it's more likely to
| get clicks?
|
| If I had unlimited cash and I was the editor, my front pages
| would be tongue-in-cheek nods to negative stories, like "CRIME ON
| PAGE 15" so they'd have to flip through a meadow of full page
| color ads of sakura trees, the textual equivalent of green noise.
|
| Archive.org has a pleasant viewing experience if you flip through
| many of the fully-scanned magazines, simply because there are no
| digital popups- at least the ads on the pages are inert and
| unable to cause a virus.
| bell-cot wrote:
| Sadly, this is old news -
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/if_it_bleeds,_it_leads - predating
| "online".
| thenerdhead wrote:
| Cynicism breeds extremism.
| beefman wrote:
| This is itself a negative story.
| sacnoradhq wrote:
| No shite! :)
|
| Actually, it's much more specific than that: outrage.
|
| Novelty makes it more viral.
|
| Propinquity also increases the response (similarity between
| reader and subject).
|
| In terms of manufacturing consent/sentiment, people who watch
| more local news tend to drift their views of police and
| authorities to more favorably. And everyone should know what the
| effect is of Fox News on its viewers.
| hi41 wrote:
| What is the evolutionary basis for us being so biased towards
| negativity?
| grrdotcloud wrote:
| Animals aren't negative.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| survival. If you miss hearing about a peace negotiation you're
| going to be pleasantly surprised, if you miss hearing about a
| conflict breaking out, your house might be a pile of rubble
| with you in it. The obsession with avoiding 'negativity' these
| days is childish. It's rational to focus on threats. The cost
| of missing one is, in the most extreme case, death. The cost of
| missing something positive is most of the time, nothing.
| kerblang wrote:
| The paper doesn't seem to introduce any novel understanding of
| the topic, just reinforce what we already assumed - maybe I'm
| missing something.
|
| I'd be more interested in a study of "persecution" news, the us-
| vs-them narrative that has become much more common in the last
| 20-30 years and which I think drives a lot of the so-called
| polarity of political dialogue.
|
| Also it would be interesting to see effects in decentralized
| publishing, e.g. youtube/tiktok & independent journalism, since
| those are so much more prevalent and integral to the broader
| media narrative now.
| [deleted]
| PhysicalNomad wrote:
| I stopped reading news a year ago for this reason, having left
| social networks for much longer. Of course I still have some
| exposure through HN, but overall I'm happier and don't miss them
| one bit.
| B1FF_PSUVM wrote:
| One of these days the fountains of poison will have 100% of a
| nearly deserted market.
|
| Great success.
| avereveard wrote:
| And it's not just news a lot of other media is producing negative
| or outright toxic content, and it's super hard to break out
| because drama and gossip are captivating, because satire can be
| fun even if disperse in a negative sea and because there is quite
| some selection bias from our own frustration in selecting the
| content that relates to us.
|
| Let's not forget we went trough four "once in a lifetime
| disaster" by now. Or more depending how you count.
|
| Today I make a conscious effort to check a channel content before
| consuming any drama in it. If the channel is 100% drama I pass,
| regardless of how captivating the original link was,to try and
| break out of the algorithm.
| omoikane wrote:
| The headline of the article is a concept that most of us are
| familiar with, but what I think is the novel part is how they
| quantified it. If you are not planning on reading all 8000+
| words, scroll to the results section and look at table 2 for all
| the headline variations and click through rates.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| It's in the human nature. People are more worried about what can
| affect them in a negative way than are they content about good
| things. Maybe it's the survival instinct that triggers with bad
| news, maybe people consider the good news to be normal.
|
| I try to click less on negative stories and more on positive
| stories. Negative things can make me angry or sad and I dislike
| being angry or sad. Also I find many negative news to be
| tiresome.
| nottathrowaway3 wrote:
| > I try to click less on negative stories and more on positive
| stories.
|
| An alternative approach is to consume news from multiple
| countries (including your own). It's so interesting to see how
| all the fnords are different and just how conditioned you were
| to consume the one kind of media designed for your country.
| nntwozz wrote:
| Kinda like what P.T. Barnum once said: "There's no such thing as
| bad publicity".
| neilv wrote:
| About 20 years ago, I would read many newspapers every day. (I
| care a lot about society, and, therefore, journalism.) I learned
| a lot about both.
|
| At some point, I had to take a break, because awareness of so
| many problems was overwhelming, and also there were diminishing
| returns (most problems are ongoing or recurring).
|
| Years later, I found myself following local news for the locale
| where I was living (and where I had some large complaints about
| that locale). Eventually, I realized that, unlike before, I was
| subconsciously looking for and drawn to stories that reinforced
| my dislike for that locale. Reading was like ranting. This seemed
| very unhealthy, so I stopped.
|
| One idea for LLMs would be to give me weekly or monthly updates
| on the news, or catch me up after some arbitrary break period.
| Maybe a more flexible NYT Week In Review.
| martincmartin wrote:
| I read a weekly news magazine (think Time, Newsweek, The
| Economist) for that reason. No need for AI, actual people can
| give you a weekly update!
| davidw wrote:
| Well that's not good news.
| mfuzzey wrote:
| Regardless of new worthiness it's logical to focus more on
| negative things.
|
| Negatives are problems to be solved, if enough people care maybe
| they will be solved too. Whereas positives don't need solving
| (though can still be good to think about to avoid throwing out
| the baby with the bathwater when addressing a negative.
|
| Of course not all negatives can be solved themselves. If it's "X
| was killed due to Y" then of course X is dead so nothing more can
| be done for X but maybe we can prevent issue Y killing someone
| else Z in the future.
| swalling wrote:
| This is approaching the status of truism to anyone who has worked
| in journalism.
|
| It's not just the macabre dopamine rush of car crashes and
| natural disasters. Critiques involving total and complete
| destruction of the restaurant/play/movie/album -- like this
| classic takedown of Guy Fieri's monstrosity of a Times Square
| restaurant
| https://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/14/dining/reviews/restaurant...
| --always draw the most eyeballs.
| TheCaptain4815 wrote:
| I only read the Wall Street journal which I feel gives fairly
| balanced and non click bait content. If it's not big enough to
| warrant being on the WSJ, do I even wanna read it?
| bleuchase wrote:
| Engagement is engagement. Ryan Holiday wrote about this years
| ago. He's not an academic but has a solid grasp on the practical
| aspect of how to exploit this tactic.
| russellbeattie wrote:
| This is just one form of "information ochlocracy" in all forms of
| media. Ochlocracy is the evil cousin of democracy - basically mob
| rule.
|
| Because the business model of media (old or new) requires a large
| audience, the least common denominator inexorably pushes content
| towards the basest human emotions and targets the least educated
| (as they are the vast majority of people).
|
| This is how we end up with the History channel focusing on Nazis
| and Ancient Aliens and Bravo transforming from a channel focused
| on the arts such as Opera, to broadcasting Real Housewives non
| stop.
|
| In terms of social media, it's the same incentives. Those that
| post or share the most inflammatory content get more reactions
| and engagement. Even cat pics produce the same level of emotion,
| except on the opposite end of the spectrum.
|
| What's not rewarded is intelligent discourse. See also "eternal
| September".
|
| A nice new trend is the small newsletter subscription model,
| where those that most appreciate in-depth, detailed thought are
| able to support it directly. But this model is simply a boutique
| solution, and it won't result in another Time Warner.
| tomkarho wrote:
| Negativity has always driven news and their consumption
|
| If it bleeds, it leads
| EGreg wrote:
| Just as I have been saying, we need an alternative to the
| capitalist profit-driven media organizations. Outrage drives
| "engagement", for both social networks and for publishers.
|
| All of the profit-driven outleys are subject to market pressures.
| Even NYTimes which won more Pulitzer prizes than anyone admits to
| A/B testing headlines for clickbait. Let alone FOX News or
| YouTubers with "X does Y, immediately regregts it" and "Foo
| DESTROYS {group we hate}"
|
| The profit motive and private ownership of the social networks
| and publications inevitably drives people into echo chambers and
| creates tribalism. Because the market selects for that over
| anything else. It's not an accident that Twitter is so toxic, for
| instance.
|
| Worse than just negativity, the media outlets selectively report
| on events in order to support their country's narrative, often
| due to their government's pressure. This can lead to wars and
| misunderstandings between huge populations, leading to violence.
|
| This is why I started https://rational.app
| sergiomattei wrote:
| Your landing page is a wall of text.
|
| Simplify it.
| hot_gril wrote:
| The news on Twitter isn't really for-profit, more like for
| glory or popularity in many cases. I'm fully convinced now that
| the issue is the one-to-many distribution. When news only
| travels from friend to friend like the old days, it tends to be
| more positive and less devious, and there are studies behind
| this. You don't make friends sending them fake ragebait, but it
| certainly works on Twitter.
|
| I'd have to see your app in action to know what it really does,
| but it does sound like the same kind of distribution as
| Twitter.
| koheripbal wrote:
| There is a lot of negativity on your site.
| [deleted]
| EGreg wrote:
| Can you give some examples? Elaborate?
|
| It highlights what's wrong with the for-profit news industry.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| It's always obvious in the Google news aggregation where the top
| article group is saying one thing and the Faux News headline is
| spinning the completely opposite direction no matter how tenuous
| the position is so long as it's owning the libs.
| suddenclarity wrote:
| Maybe Google News is just great at serving you articles that
| aligns with your viewpoint? If people don't find biased
| articles at least weekly in their favorite newspaper, then I'd
| argue that they aren't critical enough.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| I never click on them. Nothing in their profiling would make
| me a target for that company's propaganda. Ten years ago FN
| never showed up their news aggregation. Then there were
| complaints about bias so their algorithm was tweaked to be
| more "fair and balanced".
| nipponese wrote:
| What some people might call "negativity", others might call
| "risks", and I want to have as many risks on my radar as
| possible.
|
| The crime is marketing benign events as risk.
| dbtc wrote:
| This headline is itself an example of the phenomenon.
| api wrote:
| "If you mistake a bush for a lion, you are fine. If you mistake a
| lion for a bush, you are dead."
|
| Your ancestors clicked on the article that said "lion."
| varelse wrote:
| [dead]
| psychoslave wrote:
| Just flip your coordinate system, and voila, it's all positively
| existing people roaming the world in wonder.
| rohankshir wrote:
| correct - the SVB collapse was pretty bad on its own, but it
| provided the perfect opportunity to jump on the blame train and
| spin a bunch of negative narratives.
|
| News(events) = boring but useful News(events + narratives) =
| juicy and less useful
|
| I wrote about this more extensively here:
| https://claritynews.substack.com/p/a-lesson-in-how-media-and...
| ouid wrote:
| this is a bad headline. Drives is a causal word, which is not
| established. Indeed, a much more reasonable hypothesis is that
| both negative headlines and consumption are caused by high
| information events, which are more likely to be negative.
| havblue wrote:
| TFA discusses how randomized controlled trials were used to
| obtain their conclusions which do actually discuss causation.
| You're free to disagree with the study but you are incorrect in
| calling the article out as having a causation fallacy.
| ouid wrote:
| they controlled for information content?
| [deleted]
| gerad wrote:
| In other news: the sky is blue and water is wet.
| terran57 wrote:
| Good ole' negativity bias at work here...
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| Wish people could turn back time, and get back the time spent
| reading news/politics articles. Such a waste of time. Nothing
| ever happens. And if WWIII happens, nothing you can do about it
| reading articles.
| arooni wrote:
| I read far too much news/politics articles and I'd like to read
| more books instead. How do I go about doing this? The novelty
| of news and perhaps the uncertainty of rewards (slot machine
| syndrome) makes it appealing.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| wallfacer120 wrote:
| [dead]
| bpm140 wrote:
| About a year ago, I stopped consuming news cold turkey (save
| technology and movie news [the former work-necessary and the
| latter a personal vice]). I took the extra step of banning
| Twitter and Memeorandum at the router level, so that I couldn't
| revert easily.
|
| I didn't read a single political news story in the ensuing six
| months. Some of the happiest months of my life. These days I will
| read the section headlines on Memeorandum if I'm out and about,
| every week or so. I have found that I no longer have any interest
| at all in the contents of the stories. Most seem so petty.
|
| I don't honestly give a f*ck if someone on either side of the
| aisle is caught doing something immoral, because there has been
| zero consequences during my 50 years of life. The vast majority
| of power players (politicians, businesspeople and celebrities)
| get off scott free, so I've just opted out of caring.
|
| So much happier as a result.
| moremetadata wrote:
| [dead]
| LastTrain wrote:
| I did about the same thing at about the same time. I've spent
| much more time creating - music, software, retro computing.
| Much happier, but there is one corner of my brain that feels a
| bit like I had to give up on humanity to get here and that
| sucks.
| treeman79 wrote:
| I've found that one needs to decide if they are going to get
| involved, or if there is a line that can be crossed that they
| are willing to get involved.
|
| If not, ignore all news. If the line is crossed or going to be
| crossed soon. Then get involved.
| ar9av wrote:
| That's not the thrust of the study. Per the article, "Here we
| analyse the effect of negative words on news consumption...
|
| Where it is reported a reason for consumption "...negative
| information automatically activating threat responses and
| leading one to deduce that ...motivations may make 'fear' and
| 'anger' more influential...
| martin82 wrote:
| There are consequences though.
|
| For example, your purchasing power has been utterly destroyed
| in the past 50 years.
|
| And just recently your bodily autonomy was invaded by forcing
| you to take an experimental drug (that has now proven to be
| extremely dangerous) against a mostly harmless virus.
|
| I don't think it can get any more consequential than invading
| your bodily autonomy.
|
| I agree though that ignoring the news is still the best for
| mental health.
| mrexroad wrote:
| > against a mostly harmless virus.
|
| Wtf. It's easy to say that now after covid variants have
| become decreasingly virulent as they became increasingly
| transmissible, but it was absolutely _not_ mostly harmless.
| The human species won the lotto with how it evolved, but just
| spin that to play to our political leanings. I'll take the
| downvotes for saying this, but with all respect, please just
| duck off back to "doing your own research" in whatever echo
| chamber you prefer.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| We won the Lotto? Over 6.8 million people, including over 1
| million Americans died. Many more suffer from long-term
| damage. The economic cost was astronomical.
| mrexroad wrote:
| Sorry, yeah, we're in agreement here, my comment was
| poorly worded -- I meant the death rate and global
| economic damage would have been beyond catastrophic had
| it become more virulent as it became more transmissible.
| Yes, it was bad, really bad (my healthy 40y/o friend was
| on death bed at start), and to hear someone say it's "not
| that bad" or "no worse than a bad cold" is beyond the
| pale. I think my lotto comment was more in line of, "do
| you know how fucked we would be had it become more
| virulent while you all played along with games of
| politicizing masks and vaccines?" Sigh.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Yes, I agree completely.
| MaxHoppersGhost wrote:
| > And just recently your bodily autonomy was invaded by
| forcing you to take an experimental drug
|
| This is very true and terrible
|
| >(that has now proven to be extremely dangerous)
|
| This is not true, how can you say this? Proof?
| muglug wrote:
| That mostly-harmless virus killed upwards of 6 million
| worldwide
| galaxyLogic wrote:
| In the US alone it is > 1 million Covid deaths by now.
|
| When anybody says millions of deaths is "mostly harmless",
| while the vaccine that helps fight those deaths is
| "extremely dangerous", I believe they have a political
| agenda.
|
| Whereas healthcare professionals who give us the statistics
| and vaccines do not have a political agenda. They have a
| healthcare agenda.
|
| So it's really not like "both sides are bad". Whoever
| pushes unproven facts is working for the bad side.
| nradov wrote:
| I guess it's one of those game theory things. Individually each
| of us can improve our lives by "defecting" and ignoring the
| news. But if we all "cooperate" by consuming a lot of news then
| we have better odds of voting in ways that actually improve the
| world. An interesting moral dilemma: is it right to become a
| low-information voter in order to be happier?
|
| (I am not judging your choices. I honestly don't know the
| correct answer.)
| chmod600 wrote:
| "by consuming a lot of news then we have better odds of
| voting in ways that actually improve the world"
|
| I doubt that's true. Certainly not if we are all reading
| broadly and shallowly, from a few dozen media sources all
| trying to trigger outrage.
|
| It would be true if we all looked deeply at different topics.
| Then voting would represent some combination of all of that
| deep knowledge.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| How could it be 'right' to abidicate resposibility? If others
| do it, how will anything get done?
|
| Claiming powerlessness is an excuse to avoid the stress of
| our times. Now, more than ever, people need to step up and
| take responsibility.
| dhab wrote:
| I think it's a bit extreme. I have developed some heurisitics,
| which so far are (living in Australia):
|
| * news.com.au = clickbait
|
| * government funded ones = abc, sbs are free and ok
|
| * 9 news, 7 news = negative
|
| * google news = aggregator of mostly negative news
|
| * AFR, Sydney Morning Herald, .. few others = ok
|
| My experience with twitter has been the following:
|
| * I look at some content I subscribed for (humor, or tech
| related)
|
| * Then it feeds suggestions which spiral downwards into
| negativity (sometimes extreme - like videos of people getting
| shot). Soon, I resent twitter and the platform.
|
| Experience with youtube: meh, but not as bad as Twitter as
| described above
|
| Experience with Quora: better and interesting
|
| Facebook: I avoid
|
| TikTok (my wife's): interesting content - but happy to view via
| my wife's mobile, since it naturally limits my consumption
|
| Netflix: good and bad, but ok
| wanderingmind wrote:
| The most interesting news website for down under is
| theconversation. The quality is much much higher than any
| other general news website I have ever read.
| ImaCake wrote:
| I would say both ABC and SMH often lead with clickbait as
| well. I sometimes check the headlines and it is almost always
| a waste of time and emotional energy.
|
| The top article on abc at the moment is clickbaity and niche,
| although, I give credit to it actually being of relevance to
| some people.
|
| https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-03-18/leaky-buildings-
| poor-...
| nomilk wrote:
| I would swap a lot of these out for primary sources. 'News'
| sites are just middle-men for a 9:1 blend of unimportant
| trash and important information. Occasionally they can alert
| you of something important you need to know about, but once I
| learn of such topics, I examine primary source(s) and
| context; very rarely do I get info from the 'news' article
| itself; it's usually designed to titillate or outrage.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > 'News' sites are just middle-men for a 9:1 blend of
| unimportant trash and important information.
|
| You are looking at the wrong sites. There are many - more
| than I can read - which focus on serious news.
| starkd wrote:
| Entirely understandable. But taken too far, it is sort of like
| a person being raped coming to terms with the abuse and
| actually learning to like it. News can be addictive, so its
| important to keep it in check. But too much ignorance makes you
| an unwitting slave.
| hot_gril wrote:
| I went the other way, expanding the news I read to include more
| international stuff. Really makes me see the partisan stuff in
| the US as silly, so I don't get heated about it, just lazily
| keep up with what's happening. International propaganda is
| easier to spot cause I'm not living in it, which helps me
| identify it more at home. Anything I consider real news is
| still too far away to really upset me but important enough that
| I want to do something about it in a cool-headed way.
|
| And if I weren't doing that, I'd go no-news. That's fine too.
| tasty_freeze wrote:
| > Really makes me see the partisan stuff in the US as silly,
| so I don't get heated about it,
|
| Some of the partisan issues are not silly if you are affected
| by it. To pick a left issue, if you are gay and would like to
| marry your partner and get the benefits of such legal
| recognition, the differences are very consequential. To pick
| a right issue, if you think that Democrats are voting
| illegally by the millions, then addressing such threats to
| Democracy is incredibly important.
|
| There are many other issues where there is a real difference.
| As an affluent, well educated, older white guy with job
| security, I'm well insulated from many of the issues. But I
| have empathy for the people who can't be so aloof; to say
| "both sides are equally bad" across the board is lazy
| enlightened centrism.
| hot_gril wrote:
| I don't think they're equally bad, only equally silly. They
| use the same scare tactics every time, and it helps to look
| past that. Yes I care about the issues.
|
| But how I vote is different: just straight down for
| whatever is the minority party in my state. Only
| battleground states get the pandering, and I'll stop doing
| this if I ever live in a battleground state or they change
| how voting works. State propositions are a separate thing.
| whitemary wrote:
| Same but I just don't vote at all, unless there are any
| strong trustworthy pro-worker candidates which basically
| doesn't happen. I will also show up to vote against anti-
| worker ballot measures, which are more frequent.
| timeon wrote:
| There are barely any Left-wing policies because there are
| no Left-wing voters anyway.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| You'll end up with a many more anti-worker activity if
| you don't vote. And you will be ignored.
|
| And who will make decisions for you? Who will take on
| your responsibilities? What other authority is there?
| When we are children, we can be irresponsibile and our
| parents ultimately see to them. As adults, there's nobody
| else; it's just us.
| hot_gril wrote:
| One vote doesn't matter, in fact you get negative value
| out of it cause it takes time and exposes some of your
| private info to the public. I vote despite that, only
| cause I want to. There isn't a logical explanation for
| it.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > One vote doesn't matter
|
| C'mon, we can think deeper than that. One soldier doesn't
| matter; are militaries useless? One software developer
| can't do much on a sizeable project; should we abandon
| all software? All open source? One journalist, one HN
| comment, etc. etc. When can one person accomplish much by
| themselves?
|
| You're right, one person alone doesn't accomplish much,
| yet somehow humanity has accomplished incredible things.
| We are social creatures, we naturally work together to
| build and do amazing things. Please join us! The sky is
| the limit, and not even that since 1961.
| hot_gril wrote:
| Like I said, I vote anyway. And I develop software, but
| they do pay me for that, aside from the fun home
| projects.
| [deleted]
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| I only read biz/economic news religiously, like stock market
| crashes, bank failures, layoffs, etc...because they are more
| likely to affect me and I can act on that news. Business news
| also seems to have less bias, since they are judged on their
| ability to help their consumers make and retain money, rather
| than just cater to their cognitive biases.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Who is going to make decisions and hold power in our society,
| if not you and me? We have responsibilities for it; if it's
| malfunctioning, that is on us. Who will take care of these
| responsibilities for you?
|
| Expecting someone else to do it is playing a victim and a child
| - it is us, there's nobody else; there are no parents or
| authorities to take care of us while we act out. People
| following your path are why nothing happens. People who act are
| the reason many do face consequences.
|
| Look at the world that was built for you - the freedom, the
| wealthiest country in the history of the world, the technology,
| health care, roads, schools, etc. They were built by the prior
| generations, not by people who quit under stress. What are you
| building?
|
| The best tactic of the people with power is to get people like
| you to give up yours, because the public has the ultimate
| power. Why do you think people in power invest so much in
| persuasion, disinformation, etc.? If you were powerless, it
| wouldn't matter.
|
| If you claim news is useless, what are you doing on HN that is
| so useful? (And see the headlines from Memeorandum, below.)
|
| > there has been zero consequences during my 50 years of life
|
| That's a falsehood, and if more need to face consequences, that
| is up to you and me.
|
| > Memeorandum
|
| Here are the current headlines. Many have great impact on the
| future of our country, on the freedom and financial security of
| hundreds of millions. You don't care about anyone else,
| including yourself? That's not a persuasive argument.
|
| * Trump attorney ordered to testify before grand jury
| investigating former president
|
| * Law enforcement agencies are prepping for a possible Trump
| indictment as early as next week
|
| * 'The Wire' Star Lance Reddick Dead at 60
|
| * Wyoming Becomes First State to Outlaw Abortion Pills
|
| * My Struggle Session at Stanford Law School
|
| * Two gifts to Trump family from foreign nations are missing,
| report says
|
| * ICC issues arrest warrant for Putin over war crimes in
| Ukraine
|
| * House GOP ignored Capitol Police requests to review public
| Jan. 6 footage, lawyer says
|
| * Michigan Is Becoming The Anti-Florida On LGBTQ Rights -- And
| A Lot More
|
| * Biden jokes he's 'really not Irish' because he's sober,
| doesn't have relatives 'in jail'
|
| * America Has Decided It Went Overboard on Covid-19
|
| * Biden asks Congress to impose tougher penalties on executives
| of failed banks
|
| * Just Because ChatBots Can't Think Doesn't Mean They Can't Lie
|
| * Derek Chauvin, ex-officer convicted of killing George Floyd,
| pleads guilty to federal tax evasion
|
| * As crucial legal test for Antifa ideology heads to trial,
| right-wing media also scrutinized
|
| ... etc. (list is getting too long)
| dirtybird04 wrote:
| > 'The Wire' Star Lance Reddick Dead at 60
|
| > My Struggle Session at Stanford Law School
|
| > Two gifts to Trump family from foreign nations are missing,
| report says
|
| > Michigan Is Becoming The Anti-Florida On LGBTQ Rights --
| And A Lot More
|
| > Biden jokes he's 'really not Irish' because he's sober,
| doesn't have relatives 'in jail'
|
| > Just Because ChatBots Can't Think Doesn't Mean They Can't
| Lie
|
| > Derek Chauvin, ex-officer convicted of killing George
| Floyd, pleads guilty to federal tax evasion
|
| > As crucial legal test for Antifa ideology heads to trial,
| right-wing media also scrutinized
|
| I live on the west coast and the above items you mentioned
| are pure sensationalism and have absolutely nothing to do
| with me, my state, or my local community. They add absolutely
| no value, informational or otherwise, to my life. They do not
| help me make more informed choices for me and my family or
| better my life in any discernible way.
|
| You want to care about all that fluff and noise? Good for
| you. Just don't go around pretending to be a better person
| for that, or denigrating others who don't fall for that crap.
| People like you are part of the problem, not the solution.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Sure, there are some things that won't apply to you, but
| there are many that do. Also, why limit the scope of
| importance to state and local - it seems arbitrary. Things
| all over the world affect you. Look at climate change, as
| an easy example. (Also, the Antifa trial is in San Diego.)
|
| > pure sensationalism
|
| Political censorship in elite law schools, corruption by
| your President, AI dangers, justice, political oppression.
| Those things can certainly affect you and do, and will. The
| freedom of future Americans and people around the world
| depends on you - there's nobody else to do it for you.
| We're on our own. Let's get to work!
|
| While you fight for this narrative, you surrender your
| power to others who are determing the course of your life.
| You are doing just want they want.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| One of the most common bit of wisdom I've heard from older
| folks is to ignore the news. Don't read the newspaper, don't
| watch TV news, don't listen to radio news, etc.; they all say
| nothing in them is worth our time.
|
| It's among the most useful piece of advice I've ever had.
| whitemary wrote:
| I don't think the reason to be informed is to feel good.
| LoganDark wrote:
| Going too far in the other direction can be pretty annoying,
| too, though.
|
| I'm autistic and vehemently ignore and reject most pieces of
| news, especially political, and that causes tons of terrible
| things to happen whenever some sort of spoiler gets out and I
| happen to see it.
|
| It's like I'm proud of my great ignorance and having that
| threatened with mere _knowledge_ sends me into a panic of
| some sort.
|
| It's not just news. If I say "I don't know what that is lol"
| to someone, 9 times out of 10 their default response to tell
| me what it is (if it is some cultural/media thing) is the
| complete opposite of what I want, which is usually just for
| the other person to move on without telling.
|
| Knowing things can't be undone, so I strive not to know most
| things, apparently.
| ianai wrote:
| Reply with a response that will get the response you want.
| If you want them to leave the topic, say something non-
| engaging like "ok".
|
| You're likely to come across not entirely socially
| acceptable in either case, but that's probably impossible
| to counter.
| LoganDark wrote:
| > Reply with a response that will get the response you
| want.
|
| This is something that I understand, but unfortunately
| can't really perform for some reason. I always have to
| be... "honest", for lack of a better word. I will
| _always_ say something that makes things worse for me
| because it 's... just how I feel.
|
| I used to be a pathological liar, and from a young age I
| had this one friend who was a living lie detector, and
| they trained it out of me so hard that I now obsessively
| tell the truth in all situations even when it would be
| detrimental. ;-;
| ianai wrote:
| That's not quite lying. It's just not being interested in
| a topic and being clear but polite about it.
| LoganDark wrote:
| ...Maybe I didn't do a good enough job of trying to avoid
| that implication, but the point is _not_ "I don't lie
| anymore" (implying "that would be a lie"), but rather "I
| now obsessively tell the truth in all situations even
| when it would be detrimental" (meaning "that would be
| omitting things I Absolutely Must Say").
|
| In other words, even if I know just saying "ok" would
| probably work, I feel the _need_ to somehow "brag" or
| otherwise disclose my proud ignorance, even if that
| _only_ results in the literal opposite of what I want.
| nomilk wrote:
| I feel like we're failing to accurately name 'news'.
|
| The vast majority of what is offered as 'news' isn't news at
| all, it's gossip, schadenfreude, arbitrary drama, and
| frivolous feel-good stories.
|
| 'News' has a ring of plausible importance. I wish we had a
| more accurate name reflecting its mostly unimportant,
| worthless, and destructive nature.
| MandieD wrote:
| As the tagline for one of HN's self-consciously frivolous
| ancestors says, "It's not news, it's Fark!"
| labster wrote:
| But if we take all of those stories out of the news cycle,
| the only national news we'd have left is _The Onion_.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| I unironically and sincerely believe The Onion is one of,
| if not the, the best sources of journalism in our time.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| >I wish we had a more accurate name
|
| Propaganda.
| lynx23 wrote:
| This!
| GuardianCaveman wrote:
| 100% Agree. It's an entire article written about a
| celebrity or politician's tweet reacting to another
| celebrity or politician. It's an entire article that talks
| about some filler setting up the background, the actual
| embedded tweet, a paragraph or two quoting that tweet with
| filler in it, then perhaps a second reaction tweet or a
| bunch of tweets that random people responded with either
| positive/negative or both depending on what the author is
| trying to achieve or influence.
| Gigachad wrote:
| I've observed that so much of the news is published before
| the facts are even out. In a race to be first, they present
| half a story that hasn't been verified yet. So you are left
| to either be outraged preemptively or just ignore the story
| entirely as it's currently useless.
| vachina wrote:
| Yeah, they use words like "allegedly" or "according to
| unnamed sources" to free themselves from liability in the
| event when what they report turns out to be inaccurate.
| In that case might as well not report the news then if
| they're not sure.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Could you give some recent examples, especially from news
| organizations with leading reptuations (NY Times,
| Washington Post, etc.)?
|
| To a degree, that's what journalists should do: They are
| not writing a history book. They can't wait until all the
| facts are out or we'd never know if someone was arrested
| or accused until the trial was over.
| lynx23 wrote:
| reptuations, that was a freudian slip, right? Reputation
| is obviously in the eye of the beholder... What is one
| persons reputable source, is a money making machine
| without conscience for others.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| People can fabricate whatever they want. They can call a
| leading newspaper a child kidnapping ring. But reputation
| refers to something else - there is truth and people do
| tend strongly toward it; people make functional (not
| optimal) decisions as a group - that's how democratic
| self-governent has worked far, far better than any other
| form of government.
|
| It's philosophical theory that human judgment could be
| just completely arbitrary and that all these arbitrary
| opinions have equal weight. But it's cheap theory - not
| good enough for the first day of philosophy class - and
| transparently wrong, and has nothing to do with reality.
| We (you included) make imperfect but not random judgments
| all day every day, using many skills and inputs.
|
| > that was a freudian slip, right?
|
| Your assertion isn't about Freudian slips.
| lynx23 wrote:
| I ment "you likely typoed that word because you
| unconsciously dont believe in what you said", which is,
| stretching the coloquial meaning a bit, a "freudian
| slip".
|
| But reading your text, it is probably useless to talk to
| you about humorous viewpoints...
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Oh please. Try harder. How about some wit? When they
| switch to ad hominem, they have nothing of merit left
| (and no sense of humor).
| haimez wrote:
| News is just what's "New". It's name is already prefectly
| descriptive :)
| lynx23 wrote:
| I think you are drawing an arbitrary line to defend an
| industry that doesnt deserve it at all.
|
| In my book, even the supposedly important news are pure
| poison for the individual, and at the end of the day,
| unimportant as well.
|
| People that need to push a new or current narrative will
| likely disagree, but that is predictable. They dont want
| their hate-channel to be closed down.
| siva7 wrote:
| Very true but does HN count? Would you be happier without
| your daily influx of GPT news and tech layoffs?
| collinvandyck76 wrote:
| Not as much in my opinion. True, there are spikes of
| negative and cynical HN threads, but it's not nearly as
| consistently sustained as general news media.
| RockRobotRock wrote:
| HN definitely counts
| Dalewyn wrote:
| Yup. I ignore 99% of the threads that come by here, and I
| wish I could do that without bothering to read the
| clickbaity (and generally sensationally false) headlines.
| hot_gril wrote:
| I ignore a lot of the big topics. Layoffs don't concern me
| beyond just knowing that they're happening.
| hot_gril wrote:
| (and of course, not getting laid off)
| [deleted]
| flippinburgers wrote:
| HN has changed a lot. As others have stated there is a lot
| of politics injected that I couldn't care less about.
| [deleted]
| pdimitar wrote:
| Over the course of the last 3 years I found myself clicking
| on less and less HN stories. This place definitely feels
| like it lost the inventor spirit and the clever "how to"
| articles. A lot of stuff is either political or has very
| close political outcomes, and the rest is blind hype
| (ChatGPT won't revolutionize almost anything, and I'll
| stand by my words, bookmark this comment and show it to me
| in 5 years, I dare you). Let's not forget the yet-
| another-500-comments thread arguing pointlessly about
| whether startups are a good format or not. Or office vs.
| remote. And several others (but they are not many and it
| does feel like a tool a la ChatGPT could have generated
| them).
|
| Today I've gotten much bigger value for my time when
| reading about various CLI tools that process and ingest /
| export data (recent thread about `miller`) than all of the
| above, combined.
|
| HN, I feel, became more popular, and that has hurt its
| quality. So yes, I started reducing my consumption of it as
| well. I treat it like all other news sites 99% of the time,
| and I am right to do so at least 90% of them. I barely find
| 2-3 good articles per week these days.
|
| Soon I might start checking HN biweekly because the value
| proposition is just not there.
| IIAOPSW wrote:
| Replying here so I have a url for the remindme bot. see
| you in 5 years.
| x49asvk wrote:
| See you in 5 years! Though I almost agree with ChatGPT
| not revolutionalizing anything.
| IIAOPSW wrote:
| Depends how loosely we interpret this. Do we mean online
| AI language models which are part of a continuous lineage
| tracing back to the present chatGPT will not have
| revolutionized anything, or do we mean that OpenAI and
| their product line known as chatGPT in particular will
| not have revolutionized anything? Let's disambiguate now
| so no one says we are equivocating in 5 years. I'm
| understanding it to mean the former.
| pdimitar wrote:
| I mean the latter. Science progresses with big steps
| every now and then so it would be crazy for me to claim
| "AI will never exist". It's clear that eventually we'll
| get there.
|
| It's a fact that somebody somewhere thought of making
| better bearings for their horse-pulled carriages
| centuries ago. That person does not get credit for modern
| cars' suspension systems however.
| username3 wrote:
| Can you favorite the 2-3 good articles you find, so we
| can follow your recommendations?
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/favorites?id=pdimitar
| pdimitar wrote:
| Eh, favorites to me really means favorites, meaning I
| don't want too much in there.
| robswc wrote:
| >ChatGPT won't revolutionize almost anything, and I'll
| stand by my words, bookmark this comment and show it to
| me in 5 years, I dare you
|
| 1. I'll actually take you up on this, because I'm
| interested to re-visit the discourse around launch, 5
| years from now :)
|
| 2. I do agree it's overhyped to a degree. I think it will
| revolutionize _some_ things but it could turn out like
| VR. I do use it every day and I don't see a reason not
| to... I guess we'll see what the future holds!
| pdimitar wrote:
| My problem with the hyped up stuff, ChatGPT in
| particular, is that AI actually does not exist.
|
| The practitioners of the area of course have a vested
| interest to argue until the end of days that ACTUALLY AI
| does equal ML/DL and stuff but I am like "I see no Skynet
| so get off my back, we have no AI and that's that". :D
|
| But, I guess in 5 years we could argue whether certain
| progresses are indeed attributed to ChatGPT or is it
| something else entirely!
| netsroht wrote:
| This is why I prefer the term "weak AI". Weak AI is
| specifically trained to solve tasks whereas strong AI can
| _teach itself_ to solve new tasks.
|
| Whether humans are able to create strong AI is a
| philosophical question: While some argue that's not
| possible (can we be Gods?), others argue that this is the
| next logical evolutionary step.
|
| Let's see if we can at least mimic strong AI when we let
| LLMs connect to external systems (internet, money, more
| energy, etc) and specifically allow themselves to fine-
| tune or train new NNs in general.
|
| Time will tell.
| galaxyLogic wrote:
| It's very artificial you know. There's this connotation
| with the word "artificial" that it is not real, but
| artificial.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| If you don't know how your program works, in the sense
| that you don't know how it arrived at the answer it gave
| you, IMHO that's as good a reason as any to call it "AI."
|
| The days of understanding our own code are rapidly coming
| to an end. As developers, we now have the same problem
| that the mathematical community has had to deal with for
| some time, as proofs become complex enough to demand
| large chunks of peoples' careers to comprehend and
| evaluate.
|
| Prompts may or may not be the next revolution in the
| graphic arts, but they will be the next revolution in
| programming languages. I've seen more than enough to
| conclude that.
| i_play_stax wrote:
| Can confirm. Did this myself in mid 2020. So much better.
| wil421 wrote:
| I like to watch my favorite local news station. They have a lot
| of minor stories that never make the National media. Although
| there are local issues like murders, thefts, and controversial
| topics. It's still a huge downgrade from the rage inducing
| large outlets.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Just read the serious sources, like the NY Times or
| Washington Post. They have serious news and are not 'rage
| inducing'. (Skip the editorial pages.)
| uncletammy wrote:
| I expect youre being downvoted for the same reasons I felt
| the need to reply. I'm skeptical that any "local" news
| station is able to give you useful content without also
| pushing strong partisian agendas.
|
| What station is it? Asking with an open heart and mind. I
| would love it if such a thing exists in this day and age.
| wil421 wrote:
| Hesitant to give out my location but I guess if you combed
| my comment history someone could find out.
|
| I like WSB-TV and the early morning broadcast only. Lots of
| local news less the 5 o'clock prime time breaking news type
| stuff. Perhaps the key is picking the right time of day.
|
| I also pay for PBS/GPB but I am someone who can filter out
| partisan topics and welcome both liberal and conservative
| discussions. At the end of the day I make my own
| conclusions and I'm not afraid to break party lines.
| freeone3000 wrote:
| Local news tends to be way more actionable. City council
| meetings are attended by like... Thirty people? Max? I've
| shown up to ones where there are more people on the council
| than in the gallery. It's very easy to get your voice heard
| if you're in a crowd the size of a small classroom. And the
| impact is direct! They were going to accept the suburb
| negotiation for allocation of service renumeration based on
| assessed value rather than service quantity consumed! I
| voiced my opposition, as did several others; the motion was
| eventually decided against.
|
| But if you're not reading your local paper, you might not
| even have known. Of course all three of mine are INCREDIBLY
| partisan, which is great because they're partisan in
| different ways :)
| [deleted]
| sangnoir wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZggCipbiHwE
|
| edit: To add more color: "local news" is increasingly not
| local anymore. The video I linked to is a collection of
| "local" stations that are owned by Sinclair reading from the
| same script rather literally.
| medill1919 wrote:
| Make news irginizations non profit. Gove them the same tax breaks
| that churches get. Then they dont have to worry about clicks to
| pay their staff.
| oblib wrote:
| Back in the late `70s early `80s I lived in Los Angeles and I'd
| grab some fast food after work and go home and sit down and watch
| the "News". There was only one channel we could get using an
| antenna. They had 3 half hour news programs back to back. They
| started out with local news, then National news, then World news.
|
| Basically they scraped up every bit of "Bad News" they could
| find. Murders, robberies, car wrecks and natural disasters. After
| a few months of that I noticed I was getting depressed after
| consuming all that. I'd wake up feeling fine, go to work and get
| done and still feeling fine. But after that hour and a half I
| felt like life sucked.
|
| So I quit watching it and the depression went with it. Since then
| I've made a point monitor the news and learned to keep that in
| perspective with what's going on close to me.
|
| BTW, that News station was one of the very 1st to be bought up by
| "FOX". Since then they pivoted from focusing on tragedy to
| political outrage, but the effect on ones view of life is
| obviously very much connected to the "news" they consume, and a
| great many are attracted to gloom and doom and outrage.
| superfrank wrote:
| I have an auth who was a producer for a news network in the US
| back in the 90s. She said she someone came to who one day with
| a story and before they could even finish their sentence, she
| went "how many people died?" and saying that out loud made it
| click how depressing her job was. She quit shortly after and
| moved to the Scottish countryside and still says it's the best
| decision she's ever made.
| [deleted]
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| I think the situation is a bit more complex than this; or at
| least that it can be.
|
| The thing driving consumption is _engagement_. So what can news
| provide that drives engagement?
|
| Incomplete narrative.
|
| Conflict is probably the most familiar place to find an
| incomplete narrative. The easiest way to present conflict is from
| a negative perspective. A problem that is missing a solution is
| very easy to engage with.
|
| Mystery is another. What really happened? What will happen next?
| Speculate!
|
| These are broadly considered "lazy journalism", and for good
| reason. Controversial narratives are trivial to construct, even
| when the controversy itself is fake. Mystery is either an
| incomplete story or speculative fiction.
|
| ---
|
| The best works of journalism present a complete story, but that
| doesn't leave much to engage with. It might be interesting. It
| might be complicated. It might be important. Is that enough?
| Sometimes.
|
| Stories that good don't get written every day. If they did, they
| would become relatively mundane. The news _does_ get published
| every day. What can we do except to fill the days in between with
| conflict and mystery?
|
| What kinds of engagement are actually _positive_? Can they
| compete?
|
| ---
|
| I visit hacker news because it is thriving with examples of
| positive engagement.
|
| New tools, educational exposition, open questions, historical
| exploration, etc. Many of the posts here aren't news _per se_ ,
| but they are better than vain controversy.
|
| I think that news organizations should diversify their content
| and presentation formats. Find more alternatives to "new" than
| opinion and speculation. Present _opportunities_ for objectivity
| instead of neatly wrapped conclusions.
| JoeOfTexas wrote:
| I like to see both points of views between Democrats and
| Republicans. I made a little website with a side-by-side of the
| top posts for each party from reddit.
|
| https://www.worstofboth.com/
| agniikaii wrote:
| Negativity tends to last longer in comparison with positivity.
| People remember and are attracted to the bad because the good is
| secondary
| specproc wrote:
| We've got huge quantities of multilingual news data with social
| metrics (e.g. newsapi.ai), classification models, research APIs
| for Twitter.
|
| But Nature's running Upworthy and dictionary-based
| classification? It's almost low-N by today's standards. This is
| the sort of paper that could have been written a couple of
| decades ago.
| h2odragon wrote:
| There was no need to reach for more sophisticated tools; these
| were sufficient to give them the results they wanted.
|
| I suspect you wanted research where people look at the world
| and discover what it means. This is the other kind, where
| people decide what they want the world to look like, then paint
| their data to reflect that.
| ilamont wrote:
| A tale that predates the "yellow journalism" movement. One of my
| favorite anecdotes about Ben Franklin (via the Isaacson
| biography) was his tendency to deliberately gin up stories or
| controversy in his publications, using fake letters to the editor
| and other tricks. This was in the mid 1700s.
|
| TV news has the same problem. After the Eagles broke up, drummer
| Don Henley nailed it with one of his first solo hits, Dirty
| Laundry:
|
| _I make my livin ' off the evenin' news
|
| Just give me somethin', somethin' I can use
|
| People love it when you lose
|
| They love dirty laundry
|
| Well, I coulda' been an actor, but I wound up here
|
| I just have to look good, I don't have to be clear
|
| Come and whisper in my ear
|
| Give us dirty laundry_
| poo-yie wrote:
| I came to make same comment about Don Henley's song Dirty
| Laundry. The song sums it up perfectly. It's also a great song
| musically.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| There's a podcast called "The Past Times!" where two comedians
| just read a newspaper from 200 years ago. They're _insane_.
| dirtybird04 wrote:
| Thank you for the recommendation! These guys sound hilarious
| and I am really looking forward to listening to the whole
| series
| lawrenceyan wrote:
| Negativity (anger, fear, anxiety, etc...) has a way of getting
| you to cling onto it in an incredibly insidious way. It's hard
| because usually you don't notice it until you've already started
| spreading it to others.
|
| Let that shit go immediately, once you become aware. And if at
| all possible, spend time working to develop mindfulness (a
| meditation/introspection practice is very helpful).
| drak0n1c wrote:
| I follow the Community Impact paper for my city. It's a Texas
| firm that has specialized papers for each area of each major
| city. It's filled with very informative mostly positive community
| developments -- oriented around new establishments, expansions,
| road improvements, city parks/rec proposals, and events.
|
| https://communityimpact.com/
|
| Every state should have a similar paper.
| burlesona wrote:
| I'll second that Community Impact is an excellent paper and a
| real service to the community. Wish it was typical instead of
| such an outlier.
| suddenclarity wrote:
| The study isn't about news but rather clickbait shitposting on
| Upworthy. I don't refute the claim, partly because positive news
| are rarely extraordinary, but the paper isn't about news. It does
| however show that an incorrect headline can go a long way when
| trying to get attention on social media as long as the claim
| aligns with the voters.
| BirAdam wrote:
| I thought that essentially everyone knew this and had for a very
| long time... "if it bleeds it leads"
| t12hrow wrote:
| Define news. Is it the local gossip section or large social
| shifts or trends? Is the release of GPT-4 news? Was covid news?
| Any sufficiently important event will eventually knock on your
| door, so it's not like you can stick your head on the sand
| completely.
|
| Ultimately, news is indistinguishable from information, and
| information is valuable if you're able to tell the signal from
| the noise, extract the meaning, and find the balance between
| getting the most value and not wasting time. You can use that
| information to make decisions over your own life: should I invest
| in X? Should I work in Y? Should I move to Z?
|
| For example, amid the tech layoffs and the rise of AI tools to
| write code, I think one should reconsider starting a career path
| in software engineering
|
| That is, unless you're completely self sufficient and living off
| the grid, in which case you don't need any of it.
| rr888 wrote:
| I agreed with the headline but now I think about it lots of
| interesting and or funny stuff too. Look at HN as an example.
| exodust wrote:
| I think it's because people care about fixing broken things in
| the world. There's no mystery here. We want to know what's broken
| in order to discuss and debate solutions.
|
| If there's perception of injustice or bad practice in the
| community, then yes people will click the negativity. Apart from
| that there's the "popcorn" consumption, where negative things are
| more entertaining.
| [deleted]
| 0xGod wrote:
| This is bad. It is a negative feedback loop that becomes a self-
| fulfilling prophecy of negativity. We see it happening already
| with mass media being responsible for stoking tensions between
| superpowers in order to "be first" in reporting something (even
| if they have to redact it later), or in order to obtain click
| revenue. We need to stop the tabloidification of the 24/7
| negative news machines everyone is holding in their hands right
| now.
| 1270018080 wrote:
| Ever since I started my news diet I feel better overall and less
| stressed. Sure you can claim being apathetic/ignorant towards
| global current events makes me a bad person, but I do not care.
| To me, no human is designed to handle as much information input
| as we experience today.
|
| Maybe I'll become informed again when news becomes more balanced,
| but I am waiting.
| [deleted]
| zabzonk wrote:
| wow, strange but revealing comments here on the ideas of what
| constitutes news in the usa - i read the guardian (uk) every day,
| and i simply don't recognise many of these issues.
| zamadatix wrote:
| Checking out The Guardian's current UK page headlines: public
| sector strikes, controversy around media involved in a Rwanda
| visit, putin war crimes arrest warrant, actor dies, actor has
| blood cancer, labour party racism claims, SNP head of
| communications resigns due to failures, female footballers
| criticise another article, london bridge terrorist attack
| memorial, supermarkets fined after death of employee, something
| about the conservatives party upset someone wasn't prosecuted.
|
| Followed by a row for the Ukraine invasion followed by a
| spotlight section containing: "the poison umbrella" on cold war
| killings, some babble about hugh grant and complaining about
| the Oscars, _a somewhat not negative story about childcare
| funding?_
|
| ~20 completely negative and/or garbage babbling stories on the
| page before one somewhat decent one sounds exactly the same to
| me.
| gwbrooks wrote:
| Former newspaper city editor here. With few exceptions, positive
| stories -- although readers clamored for them in surveys -- never
| drove newsrack sales the way negative stories did. That's why we
| had a whole section for feel-good features but they didn't
| usually get prime front-page real estate.
|
| In the age of infinite content, headlines have become a sort of
| drama arms race. But the basic dynamic of what works and what
| doesn't for drawing in readers hasn't changed.
| pmarreck wrote:
| Do you think this is just how we're wired? What is so extremely
| disappointing to me is that, across many objective measures,
| many things seem to be improving, yet the perception most
| people have of reality is the complete opposite, thanks to this
| perverse incentive.
| jimt1234 wrote:
| > Do you think this is just how we're wired?
|
| I think the way the news is reported says more about _us_
| than it does about the organizations that do the reporting.
| If _we_ didn 't want all the negativity, _we_ would reject
| it, and they 'd stop reporting it. But that doesn't happen.
| So, essentially, _we_ want all the negativity - yes, it 's
| how _we 're_ wired. _We_ just don 't want to accept it.
| pydry wrote:
| >across many objective measures, many things seem to be
| improving
|
| Are they the things that matter to the people who have the
| perception, though?
|
| I don't think it's all about the news.
| VLM wrote:
| Most people don't read online news. Online news is a
| subculture at this point and they're not interested in happy
| stories so happy stories are not produced.
| Aperocky wrote:
| Not a psychologist but I feel like appreciating things are
| more of a learned trait but jealousy and wanting are natural.
| RajT88 wrote:
| > many things seem to be improving, yet the perception most
| people have of reality is the complete opposite
|
| Online news (as well as cable news) in particular has taken
| to farming any kinds of changes to society as moral decay.
| Airing or printing only outrage is a business model unto its
| own. See: Huffpost, Breitbart for examples.
| somenameforme wrote:
| I'd argue that people's impression of the world is going to
| be driven largely by their own perspective, not media.
| Borrowing a quote [1] from Stephen Pinker, probably the most
| visible advocate for 'things are getting better' :
|
| "... the United States is an outlier among rich Western
| democracies, with a stagnation in happiness and higher rates
| of homicide, incarceration, abortion, sexually transmitted
| disease, child mortality, obesity, educational mediocrity and
| premature death.... "
|
| Many of these issues are ones people are going to be aware
| of, and that is going to impact, them on a day to day basis.
| And that's going to inform their decisions much more than
| whatever the news is saying. And that was written back in
| 2018 which absolutely feels like the "good ole days" compared
| to now a days!
|
| [1] - https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/inspired-
| life/wp/2018/02...
| [deleted]
| themitigating wrote:
| Politicians are also pushing the notion that things are
| getting worse for support and those politicians are supported
| by news networks who may skew coverage.
| adamrezich wrote:
| sometime around the 2016 US Presidential elections, when
| outragebait headlines had arguably achieved a local maximum, I
| will now never forget how I overcame headline rage forever.
|
| I saw some headline about how students at some school, Berkeley
| I believe, had joined arms and surrounded the front entrance to
| the school, and would only allow non-white students to go
| through, forcing white students to go around and enter the back
| way, or something to that effect. I felt the all-too-familiar-
| at-that-point boiling rage enter my mind--this was an outrage!
| a clumsy attempt at making a political statement about racism,
| enacted through an act of mass racism. did these idiots not
| understand that they're not making things better for anyone,
| that their actions served only to divide rather than unite?!
| how could they not see this, it was so obvious?!? I could feel
| my blood start to boil: rrrrRRRRRAAAAUUUUUGHH--
|
| suddenly, I had this moment of clarity out of nowhere, as
| though from God Himself: I was fully aware, somewhere in the
| back of my mind, that the whole _point_ of this stunt was to
| cause outrage locally, and the whole _point_ of the article
| about it was to spread the outrage globally, even though the
| article reporting on the event was politically opposed to the
| actions the students had taken. yet, in the end, their goal was
| the same: to cause outrage!
|
| woah. "both sides" here want to cause me to be outraged, and
| here my dumb ass was, just letting it happen. why should I
| oblige either party? was I really so simple and manipulable
| that just seeing some words and photos on a screen about
| something dumb and wholly irrelevant to my own personal daily
| life could work me up this much? what the hell was wrong with
| me? why did I let myself fall for this bullshit?
|
| since that day, I have never once felt that familiar blood-
| boiling rage as the result of reading a headline or news
| article again. I can't really explain it but something just
| clicked in my head that day, giving me insight into just how
| emotionally manipulative pretty much all "news" so obviously
| is, and how, once I was made consciously aware of this
| phenomenon, it was really on _me_ to _consent_ to this blatant
| emotional manipulation--which, I then realized, I had totally
| been doing for _years_ at that point!
|
| I had nearly forgotten about this having ever happened until
| recently a very close friend saw a news article about something
| that had happened over a decade ago, politically framed such
| that it was relevant to contemporary politics, and it
| _significantly_ emotionally affected him in a way that reminded
| me all too much about my past self. I talked him through this
| story and showed him how much better off I was today now that I
| _choose_ to refuse to let news headlines and even stories
| massively emotionally affect me. it took awhile to talk him
| down from his irrationally outraged state but in the end he
| calmed down, heard what I had to say, and thanked me profusely
| for the perspective I gave him, as, much like the story that
| outraged me years ago, this too had caught him completely off-
| guard such that before he knew it he was an emotional mess, all
| because of something he read on the Internet, about something
| that had happened over a decade prior.
| froh wrote:
| "dependent origination" is a name for that chain from a
| thought all the way via emotions and physiological reaction
| (blood boiling) to new thoughts and so on.
|
| catching oneself in that circular road and taking another
| turn off that wheel, that aha!, that enlightening moment is
| what some people invest heavily into, time, energy even
| money.
|
| and you have it just like so, ten years ago, from that news
| article on racists blaming anti-racists for a racist anti-
| racism gig...
|
| what a gift :-)
|
| and thank you for sharing!
| kukkeliskuu wrote:
| Great insight! Thanks!
| double0jimb0 wrote:
| Had similar experience watching TV ads. It started with a
| beauty ad which was plainly targeting viewers' body image
| insecurities. Was very jarring to recognize how dark and
| manipulative the glossy, "upbeat" ad truly was.
|
| Then recognized same pattern in every TV ad afterwards,
| almost all target some sort of insecurity or feeling of lack.
| mncharity wrote:
| I was surfing market analyses one day, and stumbled on
| this: in the US, the largest personal care product category
| was shampoo, but in India, it was skin lightening products.
| And then I found a multinational doing shampoo to be
| beautiful ads in the US, was doing whiter is better ad
| campaigns in India. Which long-term gave the former a
| rather different taste.
| zpeti wrote:
| Yeah, I actually get more annoyed when "my own" political
| side does this. They take the worst possible example of the
| other side and make outragous article about them. Yet I know
| most people on the other side are actually good people, with
| good intentions, we just disagree on a few points.
|
| Yet all I ever see in the media are ridiculous parodies of
| the other side. I've basically stopped almost all politics
| reading at this point. It's no better than gossip columns,
| and big brother level entertainment, it's just packaged for
| people who think they're more intelligent than those who
| watch big brother.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| I guess it comes down to caring more about engaging your
| base than it is appealing to a broader audience. Which is
| unfortunate.
|
| > Yet I know most people on the other side are actually
| good people, with good intentions, we just disagree on a
| few points.
|
| I think this is the attitude most people have if they stop
| consuming so much news. And I think it dissolves a huge
| amount of animosity we see between different groups in
| western society atm.
| colechristensen wrote:
| I have less of a side as I age. The opposing side would
| probably have a convert if they weren't dominated by raving
| lunatics obsessed with offensive garbage.
|
| I have a feeling a lot of people across the political
| spectrum feel the same. Some day one of the parties is
| going to find not pandering to the emotional appeals of
| their brand of extremists is actually a huge political
| gain. I hope for that day, but not much.
| naasking wrote:
| > The opposing side would probably have a convert if they
| weren't dominated by raving lunatics obsessed with
| offensive garbage.
|
| It's telling that I literally can't tell which side
| you're referring to, as both sides seem dominated by
| raving lunatics obsessed with offensive garbage. I guess
| amplifying that garbage is exactly what sells, which is
| why reporting of each side focuses on that.
| naasking wrote:
| > and how, once I was made consciously aware of this
| phenomenon, it was really on me to consent to this blatant
| emotional manipulation--which, I then realized, I had totally
| been doing for years at that point!
|
| Welcome to the equanimity of Stoicism.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Do you think it's always been the case ? I have a strange
| belief that people before the 60s, through harsher lives, were
| a lot more resilient and thus less interested by petty news
| cycles.
| csharpminor wrote:
| I highly recommend reading old press clippings from your
| area. Reading headlines from 100 years ago personally made me
| feel as though not much has changed.
| VonGuard wrote:
| If it bleeds, it leads.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| Spectacles drive the news. It's easier to frame a negative
| issue as a spectacle than a positive. Say you have a local
| festival. That's supposed to happen. There's no news there
| except for the time and date the festival is open, and any new
| or interesting things can be found by going there. Car drives
| into a festival and runs over some people? Wow, unexpected.
| Might wanna read about that and get the details.
|
| But if your local high school football team wins a state title?
| You'll sell that paper out. Local refinery explodes? Likewise.
| mmaunder wrote:
| "Think of our newscast as a screaming woman running down the
| street with her throat cut." -Nightcrawler
| terran57 wrote:
| I find myself nodding in agreement.
| milsorgen wrote:
| It makes sense at a surface level, if you ignore negative
| information it could potentially lead to negative outcomes for
| yourself. If you ignore positive news, what's the worst that
| could happen if you're caught unawares? Something positive or
| at least personally benign?
| themitigating wrote:
| Is missing out on something positive bad? Don't positive
| stories contribute to a positive outlook on life? Therefore
| missing these stories could be a negative?
| yifanl wrote:
| As the saying goes, if you never know you have it, you'll
| never miss it.
| jader201 wrote:
| I this this is a fair point. I would argue, though, that 99%
| of the negative news (or most news, for that matter) will
| have zero effect on 99% of the population (e.g. focusing on
| individual crimes vs. aggregate crimes or a systemic crime
| problem).
|
| In an ideal world, news outlets aren't pushing news that is
| shocking for the sake of being shocking (and therefore,
| increasing viewership/readership), but pushing news that is
| actually relevant to a good percentage of their viewers.
|
| Sure, report things like severe weather forecasts, boil water
| advisories, etc.
|
| But I don't need to know about every crime, or every scandal
| in Hollywood, etc. -- and this is most of the negative
| information that's covered. Not the things that are genuinely
| relevant to most of us.
| Gare wrote:
| Yes, we are primed as animals that we are to be scared and
| vigilant. Because that ensured survival.
| themitigating wrote:
| I watched a farewell video of a very far right person dying
| of Covid. He didn't get vaccinated but I don't know if it
| was because he was anti-vax, didn't think Covid was real or
| didn't get a chance as this was early in the pandemic. It
| was a recording made from a hospital bed and uploaded to
| Facebook. As he was saying his goodbyes he said something
| like "...and tell Brandon (son) I love him, not to trust
| anyone, and no one will ever help you in life"
|
| I realized that certain people indoctrinate their children,
| and this is the correct usage of the word, with a negative
| outlook on life. They ignore the altruistic nature of
| humanity for a distance based trust system. Assuming the
| son takes this message to heart he'll likely experience
| more problems because of his mistrust and when he examines
| his situation in life confirmation bias will prevent any
| self reflection. I don't understand why you reduce us to
| "scared and vigilant" and I wonder if that is a self
| fulfilling state.
| initramfs wrote:
| hah, the person below you did a nice imitation. They
| forgot "Assuming the daughter" not son.
|
| But more seriously, the reason people indoctrinate isn't
| because they want them to be negative, but to realize
| that being pessimistic is actually going to be a more
| reliable way to have a plan for life when no one is able
| to help.
|
| For example, if your car breaks down and your cell phone
| battery is around 30%- you have time to make a few phone
| calls, but instead of wondering if your friend can pick
| you up (assuming he has a cheap pickup truck that can
| tow), you rationalize- he might be sleeping, working,
| unwilling to answer the phone. You have three phone calls
| to make, so you decide you'll compare the rates of the
| two nearest towing companies.
|
| Which do you call? You have money and time to spend, but
| you don't want to be stranded for a very long time, even
| assuming you were able to pull your car over to the side
| of the curb. Being pessimistic is just being prepared,
| and similarly, you want to try to save for a rainy day.
| sammalloy wrote:
| > the reason people indoctrinate isn't because they want
| them to be negative, but to realize that being
| pessimistic is actually going to be a more reliable way
| to have a plan for life when no one is able to help
|
| I take it you are a conservative. This is a perennial
| city people (liberal) versus rural folk (conservative)
| discussion that will never have a resolution.
|
| Liberals generally don't believe in the idea that "no one
| is able to help" because they live in larger urban
| populations that see the government as beneficial.
|
| Conservatives tended to live in more rural areas where
| there weren't as many people to help them, and they
| couldn't depend on the government.
| initramfs wrote:
| I have lived in suburban, urban, and rural environments.
| I think the issue is more about whether globalization has
| changed all that. During the pandemic lockdown, many
| people were working from home, and some realized that
| paying for rent in NYC or SF wasn't worth it, if they
| couldn't go out and enjoy it, so it makes a lot more
| sense to work from home in a rural area if I am an IT
| person. That said, I don't think political viewpoints has
| anything to do with trust- when I was in the city, I
| didn't think "liberal" or "conservative" neighbors were
| more likely to be trusted. The point is that if one is
| raised believing there will always be a helping hand, it
| is better to not expect much, even if there is nothing
| wrong in asking for more help than supposedly more
| "individualistic" areas, which, in many cases isn't
| exactly reflected in rural vs. urban environments (e.g.
| cattle grazing was exploited by libertarians as cheap
| land leasing)
| sammalloy wrote:
| > The point is that if one is raised believing there will
| always be a helping hand, it is better to not expect
| much, even if there is nothing wrong in asking for more
| help than supposedly more "individualistic" areas
|
| I don't disagree with anything here, except there is a
| correlation between the amount of trust liberals and
| conservatives give to people in their community, and one
| user up above directly addressed how small towns generate
| trust between people they personally know. The only thing
| I would disagree with here is the notion that some people
| believe there is a helping hand to be had; I think this
| is more of a political myth. What I was originally
| getting at is that liberals believe government can and
| does help people, while conservatives, at least in the
| US, promote the idea that government should be hands off.
| initramfs wrote:
| I don't disagree either, and maybe I worded it to
| indicate otherwise. While I think there is a difference
| between the notion that a helping hand exists or not and
| whether a person is entitled to advocate for government
| assistance, the two are typically correlated because
| liberals believe in a legal mechanism (voting) for seeing
| that type of assistance through a machine, the Democratic
| Machine (Tammany Hall
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoils_system) (I wouldn't
| even call many government services assistance, but
| programs that accomplish basic services, like National
| Parks management, etc).
|
| I also think the GOP relies more on the patronage system
| now,
|
| What I find interesting is that there is a study of this
| viewpoint, and it's called Primals:
| https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/Penn-Primals-Project-
| resear...
|
| I think that best captures the divide, more so than
| specific political issues, although that does overlap
| alot- for example, the perception of crime and
| immigration, while not correlated, get grouped as a
| platform issue on the right, whereas the Democratic
| platform does not consider those issues in the same
| light.
|
| There is another anthropological term for fear, that I
| can't remember but read a few days ago- I think it was a
| Dutch anthropologist who coined a term in the 70s and
| also developed a computer architecture.
| themitigating wrote:
| Except for the police, social security, and medicare
| HPsquared wrote:
| Urban living is more anonymous and alienating than rural
| living.
|
| There are too many people in a city to form relationships
| with everyone, you don't know 99.9% of the people you see
| in daily life because there are so many moving around. On
| the other hand in a small village, most times you see
| another person it's a repeated interaction and you have
| met that person before.
|
| So the rural conservative view and values on social
| interaction is more based on repeated interactions with
| people you already know, whereas the urban liberal has
| values and prefers systems that work well with anonymous
| people; the government needs to step in to help people in
| need (because their neighbours won't).
| themitigating wrote:
| Do you have evidence of this? Survey or something?
| specialist wrote:
| In my experience, neither urban or rural communities are
| impersonal.
|
| Suburbs, however, are dystopian soul destroying
| hellscapes. Simultaneously parasites feeding off of the
| prosperous urban areas while desecrating previously
| productive lands.
|
| Urban and rural peoples are natural allies, kept apart by
| pro suburbanite propaganda. The American Dream(tm) was
| presented as McMansions, endless pavement, strip malls,
| and 2 SUVs in every garage.
| initramfs wrote:
| The suburbs have changed. White Flight is a cycle, not a
| one time event in the 70s:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight
|
| https://lit.newcity.com/2010/12/20/nonfiction-review-
| please-...
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| [flagged]
| yifanl wrote:
| I don't think the relevant part of the previous comment
| was the political affiliation of the patient.
| initramfs wrote:
| there was no reason to flag it. It was a lighthearted
| joke.
| switchbak wrote:
| It's a low effort brainfart of a comment I'd expect on
| Reddit. I would downvote it too.
| rightbyte wrote:
| > "and no one will ever help you in life"
|
| Strange thing to say in a hospital bed? Also, if the
| doctors know you are dying of Covid you can hardly talk
| right? Seems fishy.
| nottathrowaway3 wrote:
| > "and no one will ever help you in life" ... strange
| thing to say in a hospital bed?
|
| It's strange until you get the hospital bill in the mail.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| Yes, but ignoring some bad news can make you healthier and
| happier. It's just that you should know what you can afford
| to ignore.
| Forestessential wrote:
| heedfullness and fear are closely related. similar to hate
| and resolve.
| attemptone wrote:
| We were also primed to seek comfort and stability. Because
| that ensured survival.
|
| Like OOP said, that was a surface level thought. Finding
| evidence in evolutionary psychology seems like a big leap
| from that.
| bawolff wrote:
| I don't really think that's a good counterexample
|
| News of bad event could directly impinge survival. News
| of a good thing happening to someone far away does not
| really improve comfort and stability.
| attemptone wrote:
| News of a bad thing happening to someone far away does
| not really impact survival as well.
|
| The point was not about providing a good counter-example.
| I wanted to show that when one hand-waves away a
| behavoiur to an abstract selection criteria, one can
| easily come up with criteria that contradicts that
| notion.
| wrp wrote:
| _Tell me, Avram, surely somewhere there are good things
| happening? Can 't you buy a paper that prints those things?_
|
| --The Rabbi in _Fiddler on the Roof_
| silisili wrote:
| Is it possible it's a scale/impact issue? I tried subscribing
| to good news, and most of it seemed...just not newsworthy.
| Small happenings?
|
| But large notable news probably still drives clicks, yeah? The
| moon landing was the most watched program in history, after
| all.
| joegahona wrote:
| I used to work at a food/recipe publication and had a similar
| experience -- users constantly complained that they wanted more
| healthy recipes, but those types of recipes always performed
| poorly. Meatloaf and other comfort foods dominated traffic.
|
| This has been a good opening for niche creators on Youtube and
| such -- i.e., there are plenty of people out there interested
| in vegan, oil-free recipes, and that audience can go to a
| specialist on Youtube and the creator can be successful
| covering only that one niche. But in aggregate it's not going
| to outperform food that provides more dopamine, so the major
| food publications have to deprioritize it.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Is meatloaf really unhealthy?
| Merad wrote:
| I wouldn't call it _unhealthy_ , unless you're of the
| mindset that red meat is inherently unhealthy. It does
| retain most of the fat from the ground beef which would
| cook out of normal burgers or hamburger steak. But it's
| also more filling than either of those due the fat and the
| inclusion of bread crumbs or oatmeal as filler.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > unless you're of the mindset that red meat is
| inherently unhealthy
|
| It's not a mindset, any more than gravity is a mindset.
| Wolfenstein98k wrote:
| Too binary. Red meat is "unhealthy" like spinach is
| unhealthy, using your logic.
|
| A moderate amount, especially lean, is considered a net
| health positive by the vast majority of the relevant
| professionals.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| The comment before mine set the binary condition. I'm not
| writing a dissertation here.
|
| > A moderate amount, especially lean, is considered a net
| health positive by the vast majority of the relevant
| professionals.
|
| I don't think that's true, but how do you define "net
| health positive". My understanding is that you are better
| off without it, but a little won't kill you.
| ragingrobot wrote:
| I suppose that depends on the meat you use and how else
| it's prepared.
|
| Use a high fat ground beef and bread crumbs that'll soak up
| that fat, and I'm sure many would consider that unhealthy.
|
| Use lean meat and something else as filler (oatmeal is
| common when trying to fill out meat) and it would be less
| unhealthy, but far more prone to error, resulting in
| perhaps a tasteless brick.
|
| Never read on meatloaf, but I'm sure a publication would go
| the "easier but fattier" route.
| alfalfasprout wrote:
| I suspect as with many things the quantity plays a factor.
| mistermann wrote:
| Has anyone tried a _serious_ meta-approach: introducing the
| public to the notion and methods of contemplating the nature
| and consequences of _the abstract phenomenon itself_?
| 65 wrote:
| As they say, "If it's a bad day, it's a good day!"
| ta1243 wrote:
| If it bleeds, it leads
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| If it bleeds it leads
| nonethewiser wrote:
| If the news is inherently skewed towards negativity then maybe
| it's not as valuable as we assume it is.
|
| This isn't an argument against the free press or anything. As
| bad as bias and fearmongering in news is, adding government
| oversight would make it way worse. It's just a thought
| experiment.
|
| To elaborate, if news is inherently skewed towards negativity
| (and I'm just taking that at face value), then maybe it
| shouldn't be revered as much as it is (by my estimation). I
| think people tend to think that news is sacred - more is better
| and it should face no challenges to its existence. But I also
| think we find ourselves in a predicament that we don't
| associate with times where news consisted of a daily paper and
| perhaps the radio. I'm not sure those times were any less prone
| to bias an negativity. The bigger difference is there was just
| a lot less news. Maybe the world would be better off with less
| news.
|
| I'm not really sure what sort of attitude change or direction
| this would dictate. Like I said, it would be terrible for the
| government to limit news, and this negativity exists because
| there is strong demand for it. I guess I think people just
| shouldn't watch the news much, with some exception. I mean if
| you look at cable for example, it's virtually all garbage.
| indymike wrote:
| > If the news is inherently skewed towards negativity then
| maybe it's not as valuable as we assume it is.
|
| I suspect discussing knowledge of the news is some kind of
| social signaling.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| I'm not sure what you mean by this. In particular what
| "knowledge of the news" is.
|
| What I'm getting at is that the premise that news is mostly
| negative seems to pretty clearly dictate that we would be
| better off without most news. Yet this seems to contradict
| a pretty wildly held belief that getting rid of news is
| troubling.
| MikeSchurman wrote:
| I think what they mean is that, someone knowing what is
| happening in the world, and being able to discuss those
| things, could be seen as them being part of a certain
| level/caste in society. Being able to discuss issues,
| being seen as intelligent and knowledgeable.
|
| Ie, you will be looked down on in some circles if you are
| not aware of what is going on. Knowing what someone else
| doesn't know is a way of being better than them. Or
| signalling that you are better than them.
|
| It's not usually as overt as this, but it's there.
| throw__away7391 wrote:
| I will admit that while reading the news I have on occasion
| consciously committed certain details about recent events
| to memory knowing I had an upcoming social gathering
| specifically for this purpose.
| ActorNightly wrote:
| Its valuable to us because of how our brains work. Learning a
| piece of info that is bad actually adjust our internal
| networks more effectively than learning what is good.
|
| It works for ML too. If Tesla had a set of training data that
| was inversed, ie the vast majority of cars were involved in a
| crash, it would have a fully working level 5 autonomous
| autopilot 2 years ago.
|
| Its much more efficient to have the knowledge of
| statistically improbable but bad actions to avoid, rather to
| have a set of good actions where you don't know where the
| boundaries are.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| That's an interesting take. I'm not sure I fully agree.
| Lots of things are scary. But not everything that is scary
| is worth constantly defending against. When the news
| oversamples or misrepresents then people will orient
| themselves towards a worse world that doesn't exist. It
| leads to unjustified resentment and animosity.
| throw__away7391 wrote:
| There's a whole category of widely believed and oft repeated
| historical myths that originated from journalists trying to
| sell newspapers, writing articles that were later cited as
| "contemporary accounts" once the truth had faded from living
| memory.
|
| A few examples; the Titanic was never called unsinkable until
| after it sank, no one committed suicide on Black Friday as a
| result of the stock market crash, and there was no public
| panic caused by the original War of the Worlds radio
| broadcast. All of these things were reported by the media at
| the time.
|
| Think of the stories you see day to day and imagine in 100
| years if these are the go-to source for information about our
| time how skewed a picture you would have of how things
| actually were.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > A few examples; the Titanic was never called unsinkable
| until after it sank, no one committed suicide on Black
| Friday as a result of the stock market crash, and there was
| no public panic caused by the original War of the Worlds
| radio broadcast. All of these things were reported by the
| media at the time.
|
| Why should I believe you, a random person on the Internet?
| nonethewiser wrote:
| That's interesting. I'm not sure what you point is. I think
| it reinforces my point that news in the past wasn't
| necessarily more informative. I'm not really sure though.
| throw__away7391 wrote:
| That it has never lived up to being the bastion of truth
| and democracy it's sometimes made out to be, it has
| always been about getting eyeballs and selling ads.
|
| These examples are more "sensational" than negative, but
| it is essentially the same idea.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| >it has always been about getting eyeballs and selling
| ads.
|
| And setting the record straight, where "straight" is
| whatever the powers-that-be want.
|
| We even have an age old saying for this: History is
| written by the victors.
|
| Historical records, and by extension journalism, have
| never been concerned about recording the facts. They have
| always been concerned only about defining the narratives
| and truths for the powers of the time.
| phs318u wrote:
| > The bigger difference is there was just a lot less news.
| Maybe the world would be better off with less news.
|
| I think you're close. There was a lot less repetition of
| news. Now the need to fill endless hours with content means
| stories are repeated ad nauseam. Keep in mind that repetition
| is known and used as a torture technique. "Repetition is an
| important neural linguistic programming interrogation tactic
| to influence the target mind" [0].
|
| [0] https://neuralguantanamo.com/no-touch-torture-techniques/
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| And thus, because profit motive drives literally everything
| (because it's impossible to forestall a takeover if you're
| broke) then all news-media trend toward maximum tolerable
| negativity.
|
| That is, there is a saddlepoint for how much negativity viewers
| desire.
|
| While I don't personally know what the threshold for
| psychological damage from exposure to this kind of media is, I
| would guess it's lower than the average exposure level is now.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| I don't observe "maximum tolerable negativity". Could you
| give an example, maybe a link to a serious news website that
| looks this way?
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| https://www.cnn.com/ as of 10:47ET:
|
| 32 links to stories above the fold for my browser
|
| 3 are emotionally neutral or positive
|
| ---------------------------------------
|
| https://www.foxnews.com/:
|
| 6 links to stories above the fold
|
| 0 are emotionally neutral or positive
|
| The only thing next is to just be the violence network
| wolverine876 wrote:
| That doesn't support the claims about 'negativity' and
| especially about 'maximum tolerable'.
| bachmeier wrote:
| This is in no way an attack on you, but your post shows exactly
| the problem. You first wrote
|
| > With few exceptions, positive stories
|
| and then you wrote
|
| > a whole section for feel-good features
|
| "Positive news" is more or less orthogonal to "feel-good
| features". When I moved to my current job, I had the option of
| watching Kansas City news or Topeka news. The KC news stations
| took the route you're suggesting. Everything was negative and
| intended to shock/alarm ("Joe Smith was murdered and then the
| police were involved in a car chase to catch the murderer. When
| they shot out his tires, he took his own life.") The Topeka
| stations did mostly positive news, with some negative mixed in.
| As any sane person would do, it didn't take long for me to go
| with only the Topeka news. It was nice to know what was going
| on in the area, to see a review of a local restaurant, or to
| hear about the debate on a change in the sales tax. I don't
| watch the news to see someone's good luck.
| Frost1x wrote:
| I've noticed some programming and sources have sort of jammed
| feel-good pieces in some weird attempt to counter balance
| things. People dying on Ukraine, banks defaulting, Little
| Timmy in nowhere USA is taking steps to setup his lemonade
| stand and donate to the local food shelter to make a
| difference.
|
| Don't get me wrong, I think efforts like Little Timmy's are
| great and in the scope of their lives is probably
| significant. It doesn't however hit the level of
| magnitude/significance and scope of their negative counter
| parts. It's only in local news sources that I tend to see a
| better balance of things that truly effect, are relevant to
| me, and aren't full of doom and gloom.
| SAI_Peregrinus wrote:
| Also there are often "feel good" stories that are really
| quite negative in disguise. "Little Timmy started a
| GoFundMe to pay off his school lunch debt, and all his
| friends donated!" and other dystopian "seems nice but is
| actually horrifying" content.
| ar-nelson wrote:
| The way I see it, news serves three purposes:
|
| ---
|
| 1. To let you know about local or world events that could
| affect you and those close to you.
|
| 2. To let you know about world events that affect others far
| away, in order to judge the effectiveness of political
| decisions and the necessity of future political decisions.
|
| 3. As a form of entertainment derived from the ongoing story of
| world history (or celebrity gossip, or whatever else).
|
| ---
|
| #1 is the reason that news feels important enough that tuning
| it out completely feels irresponsible, but it's a very small
| component of most news.
|
| #2 is perhaps necessary for democracy to work, but it's so easy
| to manipulate, and the incentive to manipulate it is so high,
| that it's questionable whether this type of news has ever
| existed without being more manipulation than fact---and this
| has been true since long before the internet.
|
| #3 is the real reason most people (myself included) read news,
| even when they convince themselves it's #1 or #2. And it
| becomes unhealthy because, as long as you're convinced you need
| to care deeply about what you're reading because it's actually
| #1 or #2, it will inspire constant anxiety.
|
| I would be interested to see a type of (perhaps government-
| funded) news service whose sole purpose is to publish only news
| that fits into category #1: if it is not reasonably likely to
| affect the average reader in an actionable way in the next 6
| months, then it can't be published in this outlet.
| claytongulick wrote:
| State sponsored media generally hasn't worked out too well.
| paulmd wrote:
| BBC is one of the best news sources around.
|
| For a long time, Al Jazeera was great on anything that
| didn't directly impact Qatari domestic politics.
|
| PBS is pretty fantastic overall and serves a lot of niches
| that aren't served by commercialized media and _really
| shouldn 't be_.
|
| Like yes if you set out to make a state-sponsored
| propaganda agency then that's what you get (see: Voice of
| America, etc), but state sponsorship of media doesn't
| inherently corrupt. If anything it's the opposite and
| really the accusations of bias end up being a way to try
| and control coverage that you find inconvenient and force
| faux-centrism (see: NPR).
| gwbrooks wrote:
| PBS is essentially corporate media, getting ~15% of its
| budget from government. NPR is even less at ~2%.
|
| Corporate vs. public ownership matters a lot less than
| institutional standards and the org's cultural commitment
| to a rigorous journalistic mission. BBC has a relatively
| strong commitment; NPR (my favorite whipping boy for bad
| journalism packaged as Thinky Stuff) does not.
| specialist wrote:
| Totally agree wrt PBS & NPR. To the shock and horror of
| most everyone I know.
|
| Since you're an expert:
|
| How do you find and consume news?
|
| If you were made King/BDFL, how would you "fix"
| investigative journalism? A la the documentary "Fit to
| Print".
| gwbrooks wrote:
| I don't know how others do it, but my main tools are:
|
| * Reading rather than watching/listening.
|
| * Going out of my way to consume content from
| authors/publications whose worldview I disagree with.
| Ditto for non-U.S. sources.
|
| * Filter based on seriousness rather than passion. The
| whole information ecosystem is full of people and
| institutions ready to be passionate about almost any
| topic; the number willing to be serious is a lot smaller.
| This, more than any other filter, will improve your news-
| consuming experience.
|
| * Read what the journalists are reading to get their
| story ideas. That means niche-y Substacks, newsletters
| and industry websites.
|
| Investigative journalism: There are some nonprofits doing
| an very good job, like ProPublica. But too often, those
| newsrooms are political/cultural monocultures. To use the
| ProPublica example, you're much, much more likely to see
| stories about evil billionaires and how government should
| have done something(tm), than investigations about how,
| say, government is holding people back.
|
| Some of this stems from hiring trends in journalism,
| which have skewed more and more to hiring coastal,
| degree-holding (relative) elites compared to the more
| blue-collar newsrooms of the past. Hire for monoculture,
| get monoculture results.
|
| But the other part is funding diversity -- left-leaning
| donors have embraced nonprofit journalism in a way right-
| leaning donors have not.
|
| When the right gives to journalistic efforts it tends to
| take the form of local investigation (and there are some
| GREAT reporters doing local-market work with that model),
| open-the-books efforts aimed at government transparency
| or, these days, own-the-libs clickbait. This reflects the
| growing delta between how much the right and left trust
| the press in the U.S.
| tootie wrote:
| That's a pretty facile analysis. PBS and NPR both have
| affiliate models where the dozens of local public radio
| and tv operate independently and are funded separately
| utilizing the affiliate network to buy and sell content.
| They are mostly funded by membership, by government
| indirectly via CPB grants, and sponsorship.
| gwbrooks wrote:
| You're right about the affiliate model. But most NPR
| stations in all but the largest markets predominantly run
| nationally syndicated content. Creating and syndicating
| that content is the NPR mothership's largest cost center,
| averaging 58% of operating expenses FY18-FY22.
|
| Corporate sponsorships are, at an average 39% during the
| same period, the largest source of funding. Contributions
| (what we'd call donations) are 12%.
|
| Put another way: Local donors may (or may not -- I don't
| know) form the backbone of funding individual stations.
| But corporate sponsorships fund most of the content that
| appears on most of the stations, and also funds its
| distribution.
| gnz11 wrote:
| Are you implying PBS does not have a commitment to a
| "rigorous journalistic mission"? It seems quite
| disingenuous to lump PBS and NPR as "corporate media" in
| the same light as corporate media entities like Fox News,
| CNN, et al.
| gwbrooks wrote:
| Two different issues, right? Reasonable people can
| disagree with her PBS and NPR are corporate media.
|
| But I am _very_ comfortable critiquing the consistently
| low quality of NPR journalism.
|
| That doesn't mean that they're in the same league with
| the worst of cable news. However, some of the dynamics
| are similar:
|
| * Journalists interviewing other journalists;
|
| * Stories with no balance from opposing-view sources; and
|
| * Facts regularly asserted by the journalist rather than
| a credible source.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| >BBC is one of the best news sources around.
|
| If I was drinking coffee my monitor and keyboard and
| mouse and desk would be ruined right now.
| bawolff wrote:
| CBC (in canada) is decent enough. I wouldn't call it
| amazing, but its not a failure (or propaganda) either.
| t12hrow wrote:
| > perhaps government-funded
|
| I suggest the opposite. I'd like a proof that there is no
| government involvement.
|
| Believe it or not, I think the closest to this is ideal is
| 4chan /pol/. It's not backed by any major corporation (unlike
| HN which is backed by Y Combinator), it's not partly owned by
| Tencent/China (unlike Reddit), and so on. There's no
| algorithm, there's no karma, there's no blue badge, it barely
| scrapes by using shady NSFW ads. That's the closest to the
| libertarian anarchy ideal we had in 90s.
|
| There's of course alphabet agencies mining data and pushing
| narratives, but that's fine.
| wil421 wrote:
| 4chan is a sick community where mental illness is coveted.
| You are correct about the 90s and finding true niche
| communities you could hang with, sharing ideas and ideology
| like the BBS days. Today is very different and the amount
| of brain washing put forth by anti-America bots and
| propaganda/make a buck machines is ridiculous.
|
| The reality these places are pushing, including HN, is out
| of touch with society. Even the European stuff is so out of
| touch I get crazy looks and responses when I've asked
| people (Europeans) about them.
| hot_gril wrote:
| 4chan only (sorta) works at a small scale, which it is.
| It's a niche. "No normies!"
| t12hrow wrote:
| I don't know if I consider it small scale, it has around
| 45M views a month according to similarweb:
| https://www.similarweb.com/website/4chan.org/#overview.
|
| Of course, it's still small scale in relation to
| behemoths like Twitter, FB, Insta, TikTok.
| jonasdegendt wrote:
| Given that there's basically no way to interact besides
| posting or replying, I'm willing to bet most of that
| traffic is just lurkers. And another large chunk of that
| traffic probably congregates on boards like /a/ and /g/.
|
| Some boards are incredibly slow given the popularity of
| the site as a whole, threads on boards like /n/ can stay
| up for weeks with barely any replies.
| hot_gril wrote:
| Some qualification: It's small enough that each board has
| a global chrono view of posts, same with replies on
| posts. You can reply back and forth and still understand
| what's going on despite the other noise.
| ar-nelson wrote:
| I don't see how an unmoderated, anarchic space like 4chan
| is close to what I described; the entire point of what I
| had in mind is a very specific kind of moderation: stories
| are only published if (a) they're reasonably likely to
| materially affect some significant portion of readers
| sometime in the next 6 months, and (b) there's something
| they can do about it or in response to it.
|
| For example, if the readership of this news service was
| entirely US-based, then it would only publish a single
| article on the Ukraine war---when it started---and then
| might only ever mention it again if it has a direct
| practical effect on US residents, like travel restrictions.
| t12hrow wrote:
| > (a) they're reasonably likely to materially affect some
| significant portion of readers sometime in the next 6
| months, and (b) there's something they can do about it or
| in response to it.
|
| That's the entire point. Who are you to decide that? How
| can you quantify 'likelyhood to be materially affected'?
| How can you empirically determine if 'someone can do
| something about X'?
|
| Your opinion is worth the same as the next guy's. Anarchy
| and no moderation whatsoever, in this context, is always
| better no matter how you try to rationalize it. The only
| problem is that it makes is harder to tell the signal
| from the noise (noise being fake stuff, tangential
| topics, hearsay, bullshit, etc.). But the opposite is
| much much worse.
| dahart wrote:
| > Anarchy and no moderation whatsoever, in this context,
| is always better [...] the opposite is much much worse.
|
| Why do you think this? What is your basis for this claim?
| Note specifically that in unmoderated channels,
| governments already do participate with propaganda, so
| your claim that the only problem is distinguishing signal
| from noise is false by your own stated standards.
|
| Agenda in reporting is a problem, there is no question,
| but I don't buy for a second that anarchy is "always"
| better or even often better. I would agree that there are
| times when it helps, but I think it's closer to few and
| far between, and that the noise and chaos in the mean
| time is detrimental and damaging to someone's ability to
| see truth when it does come through. To use the example
| from this thread, 4chan is usually demonstrably and
| objectively worse than any mainstream news at sharing
| important, relevant, and true information.
| t12hrow wrote:
| > 4chan is usually demonstrably and objectively worse
| than any mainstream news at sharing important, relevant,
| and true information.
|
| Are you talking about trivial news reporting ("this thing
| happened today")? If so, yes.
|
| If you're talking about important questions in society,
| no. I mean, if you want full-on propaganda you can read
| the New York Times or The Atlantic, or Washington Post,
| etc. Aside from tangible reporting, your probability of
| finding truth about important questions in society is
| extremely low, while they tout it to be really high --
| extremely disingenuous. And yes, in all of these places
| the Opinion section has adquired so much relevance that
| they are no longer newspapers in the traditional sense.
|
| On the other hand, if you want actual truth, you'll have
| to read through tons of bullshit, slurs, memes, jokes,
| fake news, fake tweets, CIA narratives, Mossad/JIDF
| narratives, but it will be there... buried somewhere deep
| in a 4chan thread. The great thing about this is that
| there's no pretense, it's: come at your own risk, use
| common sense, take everything with a grain of salt,
| "everything said here is satire".
|
| > Note specifically that in unmoderated channels,
| governments already do participate with propaganda
|
| That's definitely true, there's even specific slurs for
| those pushing propaganda. But that's the beauty of it,
| there could be conflicting narratives being pushed at
| once, and there's no way to tell whether someone believes
| it or is just shilling. At the end of the day, it's just
| an anonymous comment and you can only determine it's
| value based on the content of the post. You can't even
| safely tell if it's a human or a bot nowadays.
|
| I have no doubt in my mind that the free flow of
| information is always better. Now, you can argue about
| the practicity of this, and you'd be right. The thing is,
| this is a symptom of the state of affairs. Think about
| it, there are 8 billion people walking on Earth, a great
| proportion of which have a computer with an internet
| connection and a high quality camera in their pockets.
| That means that this year will be the most commented on,
| most recorded in human history by far. On top of that,
| there are governments around the world spending billions
| of US dollars in propaganda. It's no wonder 'truth' is
| obfuscated and almost impossible to come by.
| dahart wrote:
| I appreciate the response, but yeah I just don't buy that
| 4chan is better on any axis ever, _especially_ for
| important world news. I see and acknowledge that you lack
| trust in mainstream news and your government, and there's
| probably a longer story there, but I think it's
| objectively false to claim you'll find more truth on
| 4chan than mainstream news. It might be fair to say that
| certain subjects will be discussed that you wouldn't see
| on TV, then again there's almost no way to tell, and the
| stuff on 4chan is is rarely if ever made by people with
| any qualifications or expertise in the subject.
|
| This twisted argument seems to be claiming that 4chan is
| more trustworthy because it's less trustworthy. But
| you're demonstrating a double standard. If you can excuse
| and overlook the unending ocean of fake news and
| propaganda and bullshit on 4chan, then it's only fair and
| consistent to do the same for mainstream news, where it's
| also true that not everything is propaganda. You're whole
| complaint boils down to you writhing against the
| "pretense", but why does that matter, exactly? You either
| care about the truth or not, so the reputation shouldn't
| be a factor for you, especially if you seek information
| from disreputable sources.
| ar-nelson wrote:
| I get the sense that you think I'm saying more here than
| I actually am. I'm not proposing that this is the only
| kind of news that should exist, only that it would be
| nice if it existed for the kind of people that want to
| read (only) this kind of news.
|
| And I'm generally in agreement that most attempts to
| quantify 'truth' in media are hopelessly dependent on
| personal bias---but this mostly shows up in category #2
| in my list. In things where you'd never know the
| difference if it were true or not, because it would never
| affect you either way.
|
| The reason I thought a news service like this would work
| better as a government service than a private entity is
| because a government news service's commitment to the
| principles I listed could be defined by enforceable laws.
| "Likely to materially affect people" is something that
| you could reasonably argue about in a courtroom, just as
| much as other fuzzily-defined legal concepts like libel
| or false advertising.
|
| I'm imagining a news agency whose legal responsibilities
| were defined in such a way that it could be sued if one
| of the following happened:
|
| 1. It reports something that no reasonable person would
| believe meets the criteria.
|
| 2. Readers experience some kind of material harm that
| could have been avoided if they had read news reported in
| another outlet but not this one. And this harm is not the
| result of the reader being in some very small minority of
| readers (say, <1%), because after a certain point this
| will always be true for things that affect a very small
| number of people.
| UncleEntity wrote:
| > ...a government news service's commitment to the
| principles I listed could be defined by enforceable laws.
|
| The problem is whoever controls the government and
| controls the news is also the one enforcing the laws.
|
| You want to see suppression of "fake news", aka anything
| that makes the ruling party look bad, then look no
| further than government run media services.
|
| I think they thought long and hard before they add
| freedom of the press to the bill of rights.
|
| NPR does a half-assed good job of providing unbiased news
| (they unironically claim that title) as long as it isn't
| some hot button issue like Roe v Wade. In those cases
| they go into full on partisan politics propaganda machine
| mode. My absolute favorite, as I enjoy the absurd, was
| trotting out some kids who grew up in foster care with
| the implication that they would have been better off if
| their mother had had an abortion. Just an example, not a
| statement of purpose.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| > The problem is whoever controls the government and
| controls the news is also the one enforcing the laws.
|
| I know that it is not as applicable today, but you should
| really look into the whole 'separation of powers' thing.
| UncleEntity wrote:
| The executive branch is in charge of enforcing the laws
| and is also traditionally the leader of the party.
|
| Congress can pass all the laws it wants but they have no
| power to ensure they are being acted upon. And sometimes
| have no power to stop them from being violated like the
| whole Trail of Tears thing where a sitting president
| blatantly violated the law with no repercussions.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| > The executive branch is in charge of enforcing the laws
|
| What does the Judicial branch do again?
| t12hrow wrote:
| I understand what you're saying, and it would definitely
| make for an interesting experiment. If every news piece
| meets that criteria, it would be a very specific subset
| of news, but valuable nonetheless.
| zztop44 wrote:
| But of course, that misses the nuance. Lots of US-based
| readers come from Ukraine, have friends or family in
| Ukraine, or friends or family in Russia or another
| neighbouring country. Of course, that might be fine if
| your media hypothetical outlet is just one of many. But
| then people will probably just still end up the ones with
| categories #2 and #3 regardless.
| suzumer wrote:
| I wouldn't describe 4chan as karmaless. While the site
| bemoans the idea of upvotes (updoots), they'll also be the
| first to tell you how much they crave replies (which they
| call "you"s). We can see how much this affects the forum,
| with many people posting content, not because they think it
| is the best thing to post, but because they think it will
| get a reaction.
| t12hrow wrote:
| Yes, I've thought about that. In my opinion, the
| difference is that "you(s)" often reward
| controversial/contrarian takes. 4chan is already
| contrarian so what I mean here is going the opposite way.
| That is, you can go and post something that's completely
| against the culture of the forum and you'll get plenty of
| reactions. Even if it's just insults or slurs.
|
| In a funny way, this incentivises swiming against the
| current, so there's never a consensus.
|
| Karma on the other hand only creates a chilling effect,
| beacuse you're either banned or shadowbanned or somehow
| silenced. Take HN for example, if you post something
| controversial here not only it doesn't get more
| visibility, but it's grey-ed out and thrown to the
| bottom.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _#2 is perhaps necessary for democracy to work_
|
| Citizens that are active and care, is what's necessary for
| democracy to work, that is, citizens which actively monitor,
| and participate in, political developments. Mere "informed
| voters" just voting once every 4-5 years do not really make
| democracy, even if we were to be generous and assume that the
| elections-very-X-years model and the existing representation
| hierarchies system are adequate.
|
| Beyond that, for real democracy to work, the number one
| source of information of citizens should be real life
| experience with other citizens that they're actively learning
| from (their issues, grievances, etc with laws, political
| decisions, officials, etc) and collaborate with. Not the
| media.
|
| In other words, voter who 99.9% of the time tend to their
| private affairs alone, can't make democracy work.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > the number one source of information of citizens should
| be real life experience with other citizens that they're
| actively learning from (their issues, grievances, etc with
| laws, political decisions, officials, etc) and collaborate
| with. Not the media.
|
| How can the real life experiences of people I know possibly
| inform me about Ukraine, Chinese foreign policy, the SVB
| bailout, pandemic issues, etc. etc. etc.?
| coldtea wrote:
| Democracy begins at home. If there's no active citizenry
| with real-world knowledge from discussion, colloboration,
| and participation in domestic issues, then there's just
| individuals being governed like cattle, and they being
| informed on whatever foreign issue doesn't matter:
| they'll just be listening to whatever those in power will
| be doing, like they do in domestic issues.
|
| Also notice how I said "the number one source of
| information" and not "the sole source of information".
|
| And it's not just about "people you know". When far more
| citizens were far more politically active, e.g. in the
| sixties and seventies for example, you could learn about
| developments in any part of the US, and actual
| perspectives and experiences of people involved, be it
| workers, blacks, gays, student, veterans, and so on -
| without reading an establishment print media once.
|
| People and citizens movements were networked and
| exchanging experiences and perspectives, and they didn't
| even have internet, they had to do it by mouth, snail
| mail, real world gatherings, indie press, and so on.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Two points:
|
| 1. I think serious news media (not just any news media)
| is more reliable than 'people you know'. People you know,
| now manifested in social media, is the vector for the
| virulant phenomenon of disinformation and misinformation.
|
| > When far more citizens were far more politically
| active, e.g. in the sixties and seventies for example,
| you could learn about developments in any part of the US,
| and actual perspectives and experiences of people
| involved, be it workers, blacks, gays, student, veterans,
| and so on - without reading an establishment print media
| once.
|
| Could you give some examples or evidence of that? Did you
| experience it yourself? I'm not saying people had no
| information then, but I think they have far more now via
| the Internet (information including disinfo and misinfo).
| endominus wrote:
| In what way are you allowed to change state level policy
| on those issues? Should you (and by extension, everyone
| in your democratic society) be allowed to do so?
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > In what way are you allowed to change state level
| policy on those issues?
|
| State level policy depends on public support or
| opposition. For example, re Ukraine, US policymakers and
| others - from Fox News to the Russians to
| internationalists and many others - are carefully
| monitoring public opinion and trying to shape it.
|
| They are investing a lot of time and resources in that.
| Why are they doing it if public opinion doesn't matter?
| pessimizer wrote:
| > 1. To let you know about local or world events that could
| affect you and those close to you.
|
| > 2. To let you know about world events that affect others
| far away, in order to judge the effectiveness of political
| decisions and the necessity of future political decisions.
|
| > 3. As a form of entertainment derived from the ongoing
| story of world history (or celebrity gossip, or whatever
| else).
|
| The stories people classify as "positive" are exclusively
| category 3. Crime stories are entertainment, charity porn
| (especially about children doing charity work), stories about
| sick people and animals that got well again, all
| entertainment. Sports. Stories about soldiers and cops that
| are framed as inspiring and patriotic. None of it is news,
| it's messaging.
|
| It only makes sense. News that affects people is mostly news
| of problems, or more accurately, _actionable_ news. _"
| Ongoing Processes Maintaining Themselves As Planned"_ isn't
| news that affects you unless it's a followup on _" Potential
| Problem Found In Ongoing Process."_ The other actionable news
| is _" Event Occurring That You May Wish To Take Part In,"_
| and the "news" doesn't care about those unless the "event"
| writes a check.
| rr808 wrote:
| I only recently discovered PBS news. I thought it was great
| to have #1, #2 without much entertainment. Realistically I
| stopped watching after a few weeks as it was kinda boring.
| There needs to be some #3 in any offering.
| vasco wrote:
| > it will inspire constant anxiety
|
| Realize that while they might make it more likely for some,
| this is not the default. You should not feel anxious just
| consuming regular news. If you do you should probably talk to
| a doctor as this seems like an unhealthy thing.
| KoftaBob wrote:
| What got me to break out of this habit is realizing that the
| vast majority of what news sites/tv report on isn't remotely
| actionable or relevant for the average viewer.
|
| It's basically something that scratches the itch of human
| curiosity, but with manipulative and lowest common denominator
| garbage.
|
| We'd all be better off if we scratched that curiosity itch by
| reading about things we're interested in, rather than current
| events.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Just choose better news sources. Plenty are serious and high-
| consequence information - much more than I have time to read,
| in fact.
| KoftaBob wrote:
| Interesting, got any examples?
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Sure, but there's no deep secrets. Take away the partisan
| criticisms and smarter-than-though HN commentary, and
| there are few surprises (unless you go deep into news
| coverage). Newspapers are generally best - much more
| scale and room than TV or other options, and the most
| well-regarded have reputations for good reasons. (The
| trick is to ingnore the opinion pages, which are often no
| better than long HN comments.)
|
| * NY Times: Attacked from all sides by those in power,
| and for a good reason.
|
| * Washington Post: Smaller, and if I had to say, maybe
| not quite up to the NY Times
|
| * Financial Times: Expensive, but on par IMHO with the
| other two.
|
| * The Guardian can be excellent, but signal-to-noise
| (consequential-to-not) ratio isn't as strong as the
| others, IMHO.
|
| * The Economist: Free-market ideologues, but if you have
| to read one thing, they are most efficient. Not really
| journalism (they don't go out and dig up information, nor
| report their factual basis transparently with quotes,
| etc.; but short, efficient, sophisticated, very wide-
| ranging analysital pieces.
|
| * Poltico: I'm not sure what I think of them; I don't
| trust their ownership entirely [0], but they are
| seriously competing with the others, at least in
| national/international political news.
|
| The Wall Street Journal seems serious, but it's run by
| Rupert Murdoch. If people trusted the WSJ before, I don't
| know how they do now after the Dominion case revealed
| Murdoch openly manipulating reporting to favor Trump and
| others.
|
| ----
|
| Another good options is curated news summaries. I'd look
| up Just Security's, for example. Politico also has some
| newsletters like NatSec Daily. Memeorandum can be great,
| if you skip over the less important stories.
|
| [0] Look up the NY Times reporting on Axel Springer's
| owner (Axel Springer bought Politico recently).
| gwbrooks wrote:
| ^^^ This right here.
|
| Most daily-or-faster reporting is so shallow that consuming
| the information may, at times, be a net-negative to your
| understanding of whatever issue they're reporting about.
| warner25 wrote:
| I've moved towards this too, for better or worse. Between
| 18-25, I was very passionate about national politics and
| macroeconomics and consumed by following political news and
| fiery debates, as many young people are. As my adult
| responsibilities grew, I realized that the national political
| stuff was either irrelevant to my day-to-day life experience
| and / or not something that I could affect much (not
| actionable, as you said), and the return-on-investment of my
| time and attention on more immediate things was much higher.
| In my 30s now, I almost exclusively read and listen to things
| closely related to my own work and family finances and
| health. I guess there's a downside of political disengagement
| for society, though. Old people seem to become more engaged
| again when they have more free time, but maybe we end up with
| this donut hole of representation among people who are in the
| middle of working full-time and raising kids.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| Do these fiery debates help? I say as someone who also was
| like this in my late teens.
|
| I do local advocacy for transit and civic planning related
| purposes in a US city. A lot of the "work" is really
| boring, just going to long public meetings and listening to
| SMEs drone about very specific issues. But that's where the
| sausage gets made. Our local transportation department is
| very receptive to the public's urban concerns and is doing
| a lot of great work. But they're blocked right now. Not
| just because their funding is uncertain or due to cranky
| old neighbors, but mostly because they have staff shortages
| as Baby Boomers retire. There's nothing we activists can do
| about this, we can't campaign for a measure or bill that
| puts butts into seats.
|
| If you go to Youtube or online North American urbanist
| forums though, folks aren't interested in these local
| issues at all. A lot of it is raving and ranting about how
| the US puts cars first and hates its people. This is fun to
| get emotional about (and believe me I've had enough close
| run-ins with cars as a pedestrian or cyclist to feel the
| rage) but doesn't actually materially affect our local
| urban conditions. But it's a lot less fun to talk about
| budget appropriation and staffing politics and much more
| fun to get angry at the GM Streetcar Conspiracy, so nobody
| does.
|
| I'm not saying these topics aren't important; if you're new
| to the issue it's important to understand _why_ North
| American built environments are the way they are. But what
| 's more important is working to change the reality around
| you, not getting wrapped up in online debates.
| specialist wrote:
| Yup. Doing actual policy work negates a person's interest
| in infotainment (keyfabe).
|
| Similarly, working on campaigns reveals that most
| political commentary isn't even wrong, so not even worth
| debating.
|
| PS-
|
| > _about how the US puts cars first_
|
| And the flip side: How anything less than full throated
| praise for and life long devotion to cars, such as asking
| for safety improvements like sidewalks and bike paths, is
| part of a grand anti car conspiracy. Sure. There's 1.4b
| cars in the world, and growing. And me peddling to work 3
| days a week is an existential threat to the world order.
| tayo42 wrote:
| There's a reddit post that pointed out how much of an
| outlier your personality has to be to be someone that
| actively posts online. These online discussions are
| almost never worth the effort and don't really represent
| average people.
| Wolfenstein98k wrote:
| I think you incorrectly assume that "paying attention"
| makes your vote more informed.
|
| News generally doesn't "educate" (eg add knowledge to your
| views that then updates them), it confirms biases.
| TorontoTheGood wrote:
| You sort of get to see this in real time on Reddit, upvotes
| generally goes to stuff that upsets people.
| HybridCurve wrote:
| Similarly related: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/why-is-u-s-
| media-so-negativ...
|
| Freakonomics had a decent episode which explained some of these
| mechanisms.
| numbers_guy wrote:
| Maybe it is because happy people do not consume the news? Happy
| people tend to have full lives and are therefore too busy to
| waste time ingesting news about events that are not going to
| personally affect them. Whereas, I can only speak for myself, but
| when I am down (like right now), I spend lots of time doing
| nothing but browsing news aggregator websites and leaving
| comments like this one.
|
| And of course, negative news would resonate more with a person
| who is in a bad mood.
| now__what wrote:
| Happy person speaking. I subscribe to the physical edition of
| several (paid) local news publications, mostly to keep tabs on
| local events, new businesses opening, and stuff that requires
| political engagement (votes, borough and city meetings, etc.)
| It makes me feel more connected to my community, and I never
| run out of fun stuff to do :)
|
| I don't bother with online news; most of it is irrelevant to
| me. If a national story has some bearing on my life, it'll
| usually end up in the local Sunday paper anyway.
| [deleted]
| dageshi wrote:
| I cut out actively searching for news completely, I'm
| infinitely happier for it.
|
| All reading the news ever did was make me upset about things I
| couldn't change.
| ShroudedNight wrote:
| I can definitely recognise similar patterns in my own behaviour
| and how they relate to mood. Infamy is very effective at
| rallying what is essentially an ad-hoc community, and so is
| viscerally attractive when I feel lonely or have feelings
| adjacent thereof. But the company I find in misery ends up
| being especially unproductive and unconstructive and hostile to
| calls to action that are collaborative, or can't guarantee
| immediate ROI. And so, the payoff I need to feel better,
| collaborative edification and mutual restoration of hope,
| doesn't happen, and so I can find myself having spent hours
| hopping from outrage to outrage, getting progressively worse
| until exhaustion demands a rest that (hopefully) provides the
| respite and reset required to pursue a more productive
| alternative.
| olliecornelia wrote:
| Some people are hoping for a catastrophe that will render all
| their personal problems irrelevant, be it World War III,
| environmental disasters or societal collapse. Like a snow day
| for your whole life.
| slickdork wrote:
| Thank you, that's a great way to describe why I always check
| the news the moment I wake up.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| I figure if that were to happen, the first clue would be
| the Internet being out. So, might as well load something
| better than the news.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Always hard to tell if the world is ending or if Amazon
| East is down.
| seysetawt wrote:
| My parents. Never as excited as when they're watching
| disaster on TV.
| redleggedfrog wrote:
| "Like a snow day for your whole life." Thank you, that gave
| me a hearty laugh.
| glomgril wrote:
| That's kinda how the pandemic felt to a degree. A happier
| than average time in my personal life, despite (or perhaps
| due in part to?!) all the carnage and pandemonium throughout
| the world. Feels wrong to say, but I will look back on my
| experience of the pandemic fondly.
| npunt wrote:
| Agree, the pandemic didn't hit the way I expected and I've
| heard many with similar experiences. This type of response
| (generally speaking, not necessarily you) may for some be
| driven by hypervigilance, as one of the ways it manifests
| is a level of calm in emergencies when others are freaking
| out. Rather paradoxical on the surface, but has to do with
| adaptation to certain stress levels and threat/friend
| response. The pandemic made a lot of friends into threats,
| if you were trying to avoid covid. Safety came from a
| greater level of suspicion and alertness to surroundings;
| an unhealthy response in everyday life but rather suitable
| for a pandemic. Another example is soldiers who come back
| from war can feel really out of place in civilian life, but
| in wartime can feel like they're 'home'.
| glomgril wrote:
| Yeah that is consistent with my experience for sure.
| Probably true for lots of others too. I'm pretty neurotic
| about dumb shit on a day-to-day basis, but the few times
| something actually extremely serious has gone wrong
| in/around my life, it's rarely felt particularly scary or
| panic-inducing -- maybe even less so than the usual "oh
| my god I probably left the stove on and the building will
| burn to the ground and it'll be all my fault!"
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| This is a pretty common behavior for folks with anxiety
| related disorders, obviously closely tied with neurotic
| behavior. For me, there's nothing like the clarity of an
| all-out disaster to focus and sober me up.
| throwaway742 wrote:
| I'm in this comment and I don't like it.
| thrown123098 wrote:
| We had that. It was called Covid. Two years later we are
| still dealing with the first phase of the completely
| predictable results rolling lock downs caused. In another 5
| we will start dealing with the unpredictable ones.
|
| Here's hoping that we're wise enough to not let reddit admits
| dictate world health policy again.
| flippinburgers wrote:
| Is is a snow day from their life or is it that their life
| hasn't or isn't going the way they expected but they perceive
| everyone else to be living fulfilling lives... and they would
| like to see that end?
| wafriedemann wrote:
| Very interesting point. The other type is people who think
| they'll be on top after a society-breaking external event.
| It's a very bitter and passive attitude. Something to hold on
| to for the ones who don't have the power to do things
| themselves. I guess News just mirror that attitude. In a less
| dramatic way negative News distract you from your own
| problems for a while.
| unity1001 wrote:
| > Very interesting point. The other type is people who
| think they'll be on top after a society-breaking external
| event
|
| Wait until you see those who want to create a nuclear war
| somewhere to make an apocalypse happen so that Jesus of
| Nazareth can come back. Then there are also ones who
| believe that the nuclear apocalypse must be global for
| Jesus to return. Have your next shock when you discover
| that these people actually have politicians among them.
| Then another one when you discover that the last US Sect.
| of State himself publicly admitted to be one of those...
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| Of course everyone loses to an extent in a collapse but
| power is relative. And short of a meteor collapses are
| usually partial (e.g. the roman empire fell but the church
| remained and consolidated power).
|
| You can only paint with a broad brush but it's not exactly
| hard to pick out groups that will be net recipients of
| _relative_ power and wealth in various collapse scenarios.
|
| If the financial system collapses people who own capital in
| whole (e.g. some tradesman with his van full of tools) and
| people who own "promises" of things (the contents of your
| 401k, bank account, etc) lose. If high level government
| collapses people who are associated with alternate sources
| of organization and administration (local government, the
| church) win. If local government collapses people who
| depended a lot on those services lose and people who
| already went without win.
|
| Remember, money and political capital are convertible to
| each other to an extent so that complicates things as well.
|
| So it's perfectly rational for people to root for the kind
| of specific tumultuous change that would benefit them.
| luckylion wrote:
| In my experience, it's not those that are likely to be
| better off after a catastrophe who are looking for it.
| They are already pretty well off, they have a lot to lose
| in chaos.
|
| Those who don't have a lot to lose are more interested in
| a chaotic phase that rolls the dice and will quickly
| reshuffle the social order. The rich are moving into
| gated communities, they're not looking forward to living
| in a mad max world -- they're trying to keep that world
| out.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| In fairness, there's no such thing as a mad max world. At
| least not one without the rich. A mad max world is
| predicated on companies like Halliburton continuing to
| keep the fossil fuel deliveries coming. Which, in turn,
| is predicated on keeping refineries maintained and
| running. Keeping pipelines secure. And keeping roads
| repaired. All of which imply a very large number of
| wealthy people. (Assuming even state or regional scale
| energy logistics.)
|
| To get mad max, we have to have alternative energy
| production and storage be cheap enough for broke people
| to afford. Even then, they'd need to be able to afford
| enough of that energy that they can spend huge amounts of
| it riding around looking for other people to steal from
| rather than spending the energy on farming and heating
| their homes. Raiding might work for post apocalyptic
| populations in Florida or South Carolina. I imagine the
| climate might be conducive to that sort of thing. But in
| a world with no energy deliveries, spending what little
| energy you have so frivolously would quickly doom you and
| your family if you live in Minnesota, Illinois, or
| Wisconsin for instance.
| ctocoder wrote:
| This is a problem to fix, which society has not itself
| figured out yet.
|
| Hope, being good enough, your time is your time and desire
| mitigation is a solution.
|
| Productize and scale happiness
| ihateyouall123 wrote:
| What does this empty platitude mean?
| mistermann wrote:
| What if fixes exist but everyone is only able to laugh at
| them due to their conditioning?
| avgcorrection wrote:
| While other people project.
| themitigating wrote:
| "Oh thank god, society collapsed, now I don't owe that $5k of
| credit card debt, win win"
| web3-is-a-scam wrote:
| "now if you'll excuse me I need to check my squirrel trap
| for breakfast, hopefully the dogs didn't get it to it yet"
| jckahn wrote:
| I consider myself a happy person and love to stay on top of the
| news. It makes the day more interesting.
| redleggedfrog wrote:
| It works the other way, too. You're happier when you don't
| consume the news. That is also scientifically proven, although
| I have no linkage to support that claim.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _happy people do not consume the news_
|
| Or consume different news. Ad-driven news is vastly more
| crisis-impending than subscription-driven news, which tends to
| be more contemplative as well as zoom out and explore regions
| and issues that aren't in spotlight. (I read the _Financial
| Times_ , Wall Street _Journal_ , _Bloomberg_ , _Economist_ ,
| _Information_ , _Monde Diplomatique_ and _Paris Review_ , in
| addition to a number of stacks.)
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| It is a valid question, but anecdotally, I am a happy camper,
| who typically does not really worry too much, but events over
| the past few years forced to cut down on checking news, because
| the more I understand it, the more depressed I get over state
| of affairs I have zero control over. This weird level of
| inability to make any kind of difference puts a damper on
| things.
|
| I set acceptable times for when I review stuff and even then I
| try hard to curate it as much as possible to avoid mindless
| scrolling. It is not easy and you get psychological jitters (
| and you try to channel it some other ways ) and you can feel
| your hard trying to reach for that mouse.
|
| But overall the results were/are worth it. Sure, we are facing
| eventual extinction of human race, but one could argue that has
| been the case for several decades now so I sleep much better.
| themitigating wrote:
| "Don't worry about the things you can't change"
|
| More specifically the things you don't have control over.
| harles wrote:
| I suspect this isn't the case. Even when I'm in a great mood, I
| find myself drawn more to negative headlines. I wonder if it's
| related to our odd loss aversion behavior[0].
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Trolls troll because they enjoy the stimulus that it provides.
| Perhaps there is some overlap with that and posting negative
| news? Prison Experiment meets Social Media (which weaponizes
| and amplifies).
|
| https://theconversation.com/new-research-shows-trolls-dont-j...
| (New research shows trolls don't just enjoy hurting others,
| they also feel good about themselves)
| mistermann wrote:
| > Trolls troll because they enjoy the stimulus that it
| provides.
|
| And normal people love self-serving, simplistic, "just so"
| stories.
| brwck wrote:
| Does it not drive print and cable news consumption too? CNN and
| Fox news are as negative as you can get and the masses flock to
| them.
| hot_gril wrote:
| CNN and Fox even fight each other on the meta level. It's
| hilarious.
| gflemingiiii wrote:
| No shit. Negativity drives anything ad supported. Web 2.0 will go
| down as negativity driven. You can see it on Hacker News as well
| talkingtab wrote:
| Two stories:
|
| Biden & Trump Get Into Food Fight at Restaurant?
|
| More and More Americans Deal With Evictions.
|
| Question: Which of these two stories will get more clicks for an
| advertiser? Click-bait pays the bills for our news. NYT is an
| obvious example. Their stories? How much home can a million buy
| in Portland. Which $600,000 apartment would you choose in
| Brooklyn.
|
| Negativity is certainly a factor in click-bait but lets pin the
| tail on the donkey: targeted advertising as a business model.
| spandrew wrote:
| I went for a jog at my condo's gym the other day and the news was
| on. During my 30m session I learned about 3 violent crimes around
| the city. 2 car collisions. And a bunch of political turmoil etc.
|
| I thought to myself: Why do I need to know person-x was one in 3
| million to get killed? Why is this compelling? Is there a risk to
| me?
|
| Was such an overtly negative feeling to watch that. Turned it off
| half way through the run.
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