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"the internet is distorting our collective grasp on the truth. " And corporate owned newspapers never did any distorting right NYT? Perhaps if the media had a

"the internet is distorting our collective grasp on the truth. " And corporate owned newspapers never did any distorting right NYT? Perhaps if the media had a shred of integrity, people wouldn't be going off to the onion to get their news.

ryanx435 10y ago
Yeah, this article sounds like a poorly written plug for the authors book (he provides a link about halfway through the article). He is using the controversy around the election as an excuse to write an ad for his book disguised as an article.
the_cat_kittles 10y ago
that is a lazy false equivalence that shows that you probably didnt read the article. the central thesis seems to be that given the wider array of news sources, our biases towards reinforcing what we already believed are further enabled. maybe you could address that instead of saying that "corporate owned newspapers" are distorting. of course every news source has a bias. the point is that there are more now, so its easier to build a more complete echo chamber.
- wamsachel 10y ago
  No...the author of the article was the lazy one, and it's not just this author because as you may have noticed there's a rising cry for companies to help police cyber bullying, truthiness etc. Notice how no one inside the establishment is assigning culpability to themselves, the self serving conglomerates for the public's distrust. Instead shifting the blame and calling for actions...actions which undoubtably will ramp up propaganda and censorship for the benefit of elites. For every Alex Jones that gets censored, will there be a Chomsky that also gets banned from public discourse? How am I supposed to sympathize with this author when we just had a presidential campaign openly discusses their social media astro turfing whilst leaks reveal dizzying amounts of media collusion, but is there any official cry to end that practice? Of course not. So go ahead and pretend that it's all because the internet allows people to go get their conspiracies from so many different sources, and pretend that the public's distrust in MSM is unfounded and undeserved.
  - justaguyonline 10y ago
    Man, your reply is just exactly one of the reasons I almost never post online like this and just lurk. Not only did you ignore the point of the post you replied to ("lets talk about the article and criticize those ideas in context"), you segued to exactly the kind of narratives that the author of the article was talking about and used them to declaim anyone who disagrees with you. It would be one thing if you bothered to critique the author on any of his actual points, but you decided to ramp it up by somehow claiming if he got his way, we would be censoring Noam Chomsky. ctrl-f, censorship isn't even mentioned in the article. The crux of your argument seems to be something along the lines that that the ideas in this article are being put forwards "for the benefit of the elites", which is the kind of thinking that I (and I think the author of the article would agree with me) that makes as much sense as saying "you are being punished for your hubris by Zeus". As in, you ascribe actions to beings that are fundamentally invisible to others, that secretly control the world around and that you can divine the existence of, but are unable to explain to others in any but in the most vaguest of terms. The point that upsets me about this kind of behavior, is that in viewing it, often people are turned off and are less likely to take part in conversations where they see others treated that same way. The shrinking minority of people who post vs just lurk, already a tiny approximate 10%, in the end becomes the even smaller fraction of people who can put up with and dish out the exact same vitriol. Or, simply agree with vitriol directed elsewhere.
    - jlgaddis 10y ago
      Welcome to HN! Like you, I lurked for a long time (a couple of years) before a comment got me emotionally charged up enough to finally create an account. I'm certainly glad I did, though. Yeah, every once in a while somebody "pees in the pool" but (as I'm sure you already know) normally the conversation and dialogue here is better than what you'll get at most other venues on the Internet. Now that you've got an account, just stay logged in, continue contributing, and help even out the signal-to-noise ratio a little bit more.
    - wamsachel 10y ago
      I ignored the point because I wanted to (coincidentally because that's what the OP author was doing, imo). I wanted to point out the hypocrisy of the NYT, and to point out that a communication giant complaining about how consumers have options, is not good at all for objective truth; and this complaining, both from private companies and government, is growing. I was work and didn't have time to write a clean thesis, so sorry.
- eli_gottlieb 10y ago
  >the central thesis seems to be that given the wider array of news sources, our biases towards reinforcing what we already believed are further enabled. Really? And was that true when there were hundreds of local newspapers with independent journalists on staff?

ryanx435 10y ago

Yeah, this article sounds like a poorly written plug for the authors book (he provides a link about halfway through the article). He is using the controversy around the election as an excuse to write an ad for his book disguised as an article.

the_cat_kittles 10y ago

that is a lazy false equivalence that shows that you probably didnt read the article. the central thesis seems to be that given the wider array of news sources, our biases towards reinforcing what we already believed are further enabled. maybe you could address that instead of saying that "corporate owned newspapers" are distorting. of course every news source has a bias. the point is that there are more now, so its easier to build a more complete echo chamber.

wamsachel 10y ago
No...the author of the article was the lazy one, and it's not just this author because as you may have noticed there's a rising cry for companies to help police cyber bullying, truthiness etc. Notice how no one inside the establishment is assigning culpability to themselves, the self serving conglomerates for the public's distrust. Instead shifting the blame and calling for actions...actions which undoubtably will ramp up propaganda and censorship for the benefit of elites. For every Alex Jones that gets censored, will there be a Chomsky that also gets banned from public discourse? How am I supposed to sympathize with this author when we just had a presidential campaign openly discusses their social media astro turfing whilst leaks reveal dizzying amounts of media collusion, but is there any official cry to end that practice? Of course not. So go ahead and pretend that it's all because the internet allows people to go get their conspiracies from so many different sources, and pretend that the public's distrust in MSM is unfounded and undeserved.
- justaguyonline 10y ago
  Man, your reply is just exactly one of the reasons I almost never post online like this and just lurk. Not only did you ignore the point of the post you replied to ("lets talk about the article and criticize those ideas in context"), you segued to exactly the kind of narratives that the author of the article was talking about and used them to declaim anyone who disagrees with you. It would be one thing if you bothered to critique the author on any of his actual points, but you decided to ramp it up by somehow claiming if he got his way, we would be censoring Noam Chomsky. ctrl-f, censorship isn't even mentioned in the article. The crux of your argument seems to be something along the lines that that the ideas in this article are being put forwards "for the benefit of the elites", which is the kind of thinking that I (and I think the author of the article would agree with me) that makes as much sense as saying "you are being punished for your hubris by Zeus". As in, you ascribe actions to beings that are fundamentally invisible to others, that secretly control the world around and that you can divine the existence of, but are unable to explain to others in any but in the most vaguest of terms. The point that upsets me about this kind of behavior, is that in viewing it, often people are turned off and are less likely to take part in conversations where they see others treated that same way. The shrinking minority of people who post vs just lurk, already a tiny approximate 10%, in the end becomes the even smaller fraction of people who can put up with and dish out the exact same vitriol. Or, simply agree with vitriol directed elsewhere.
  - jlgaddis 10y ago
    Welcome to HN! Like you, I lurked for a long time (a couple of years) before a comment got me emotionally charged up enough to finally create an account. I'm certainly glad I did, though. Yeah, every once in a while somebody "pees in the pool" but (as I'm sure you already know) normally the conversation and dialogue here is better than what you'll get at most other venues on the Internet. Now that you've got an account, just stay logged in, continue contributing, and help even out the signal-to-noise ratio a little bit more.
  - wamsachel 10y ago
    I ignored the point because I wanted to (coincidentally because that's what the OP author was doing, imo). I wanted to point out the hypocrisy of the NYT, and to point out that a communication giant complaining about how consumers have options, is not good at all for objective truth; and this complaining, both from private companies and government, is growing. I was work and didn't have time to write a clean thesis, so sorry.
eli_gottlieb 10y ago
>the central thesis seems to be that given the wider array of news sources, our biases towards reinforcing what we already believed are further enabled. Really? And was that true when there were hundreds of local newspapers with independent journalists on staff?