5 ms·

I don't see why people think that having TV and traditional media die out is a good thing. Major internet news and entertainment sources are not only as biased,

I don't see why people think that having TV and traditional media die out is a good thing. Major internet news and entertainment sources are not only as biased, but also capable of colnsealing it very well. Personalized propaganda is a nightmare we see raising. People living in the same household are so disconnected because they get completely different news coverage for the same events. Most content on the internet isn't of better quality either. 10 years ago I would never expect saying this, but old media (TV, printed newpapers etc) are now more reliable than internet-delivered content. At least TV and printed newspapers can't change history by making edits in their articles and videos after publishing them.

iovrthoughtthis 9y ago
This feels similar (but not the same!) as the "vaccines cause autism" argument. Perhaps the news was never that reliable it's just easier to see unreliable news now? It could also be that everyone got the same bias previously so it seemed more coherent. Now that stories are spun to our personal biases we individually see more sides and so things seem less coherent?
- jacquesm 9y ago
  > This feels similar (but not the same!) as the "vaccines cause autism" argument. Except that it isn't similar at all. The news may not have been reliable and may have always had a propaganda element in it (especially when it came to things like war coverage, royal families and so on), but it was a reasonably known quantity. The 'weaponization' of news and the horizontal interconnects between people facilitating the formation of cliques and echo chambers is as far as I can see a historically unprecedented affair. The degree to which this is responsible for the current polarization of entire societies is something that will be studied for a long time, the 'vaccines cause autism' argument is for the most part limited to the fringes rather than that it expands at the speed of light to all corners of our (global!) society.
  - JumpCrisscross 9y ago
    > horizontal interconnects between people facilitating the formation of cliques and echo chambers is as far as I can see a historically unprecedented affair To give mechanism to your effect, microtargetting an audience has never been possible before the way it is today. You can assemble an in-group audience of millions before anyone outside even notices you exist. That jeapordises traditional fact-checking mechanisms.
lentil_soup 9y ago
But was there any real guarantee that "old media" was more reliable? Weren't we just getting one view of the world which we assumed was true? I agree, personalized propaganda is a nightmare.
- michaelt 9y ago
  Well, part of that depends on your definitions of "new" and "old" media. Some things can be readily compared - easy to compare the Washington Post of today to Washington Post of the 1970s. But many of today's subreddits, facebook pages and 4chan boards don't have a direct equivalent in the 1970s. Comparing 1970s WaPo vs 2018 WaPo will give you a different result to comparing 1970s WaPo vs (2018 WaPo + r/LateStageCapitalism + r/The_Donald)
  - humanrebar 9y ago
    > But many of today's subreddits, facebook pages and 4chan boards don't have a direct equivalent in the 1970s. I'd like to subscribe to your newsletter ()! But seriously, The Birth of a Nation came out somewhat before r/RarePepes. Michael Moore films also (barely) predate social media. And people were reading about JFK assassination conspiracies and fake moon landings way before "new" media was around. () The equivalent to a niche social media group was subscribing to a niche political newsletter.
- John_KZ 9y ago
  With the old media everyone got the same story. It wasn't assumed to be true, because you knew who was saying this (it's hard for a large newpaper to hide their political affiliation), and the news piece was judged by other reporters on different papers and people you personally knew. Since you all were getting the same news, you could discuss them and argue about their validity. Now this just doesn't happen. Everyone gets a different news feed, which partly is the reason we need comment sections so much. And comment sections and forums were ok before the widespread use of mass censoring based on NLP or manual identification of political bias, pre-fabricated conversations, selective de-ranking and all other kinds of trickery. Simply put, it used to be that internet content was purely the result of individual personal effort, so there was something to trust behind every article, because you knew that someone was putting effort into it and getting almost nothing material in return. Now the validity of news pieces only boils down to trust, and I trust the established media more than random strangers and small companies trying to make a quick buck, because the established media can't hide lying and they have something to lose, their trustworthingness and billions of dollars. The same cannot be said for anonymous or pseudomymous internet companies that for all you know were created yesterday and will vanish tomorrow or after the next elections perhaps.
madspindel 9y ago
> printed newspapers can't change history by making edits in their articles and videos after publishing them That's a bad thing. At least when you are reading Washington Posts online article about the russian hack of the US power grid it says: "Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly said that Russian hackers had penetrated the U.S. electric grid. Authorities say there is no indication of that so far. The computer at Burlington Electric that was hacked was not attached to the grid." In old media, people would still believe it was russian goverment hacking. Now it backfired in the online world and "fake news".
- einr 9y ago
  That's a bad thing. At least when you are reading Washington Posts online article about the russian hack of the US power grid it says: "Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly said that Russian hackers had penetrated the U.S. electric grid. Authorities say there is no indication of that so far. The computer at Burlington Electric that was hacked was not attached to the grid." The record that a correction was made only exists if all involved parties wants it to. If the publisher/government/Google/ISP etc. has malicious intent, they could make changes silently and pretend as if nothing happened. At least with newspapers, the physical copy of the previous version will always exist (barring the implementation of totalitarian government and 1984-style memory holes, of course).
  - gt_ 9y ago
    This is a actual use for blockchain that we could put into action pretty much whenever we can decide to.
    - mikepurvis 9y ago
      Or just, you know, a cache.
  - dorfsmay 9y ago
    This, the ability for people controlling the media to change history, is why archive.org was created. Do think about them when you contribute to "charities", even a few dollars per year goes a long way.
mrweasel 9y ago
I don't know how the media landscape looks in other countries, but in Denmark actual news on TV is basically non-existing. There are news programming scheduled, but they often lack actual news content. Danish TV2 for instance have a "30 minute" news program at 19:00. It consist of a short news summary (3 minutes), one main story (around 7 minutes), 5 minutes for "other news items". 5 minutes for weather and 5 minutes for an "inspirational" story, which would be more fitting for an evening talkshow. There aren't real news broadcasts left on TV any more. I don't think that TV necessarily should die out, but the TV stations are slowly making themself less relevant by focusing on more, but cheaper content, rather than scaling down. Do you really need to run six channels, when you only have content for 2 or 3?
- dingo_bat 9y ago
  Maybe your experience is unique to Denmark. It's the opposite here in India. There are infinite number of 24 hour news channels in every language you can imagine.
  - mrweasel 9y ago
    That may very well be. We do have one 24 hour news channel, but they have very little actually news.
upofadown 9y ago
Local TV news is not the type of linear streaming that is dying. The stuff that is dying is the stuff that works better as streaming such as prime time dramas. I tend to spend a lot of time these days providing advice for those installing TV antennas. People often get a TV antenna as part of the process of getting rid of cable. Local TV news is the number one reason that anyone bothers to work to get access to broadcast linear video streams. Like with many technological revolutions, the old thing will probably not go away entirely, but will contract into the niches where it is most valuable.
allpratik 9y ago
Exactly this, Personalised content is actually promoting the thoughts irrespective if they are right or wrong. And people increasingly tend to believe that what they are thinking is indeed right. Because they see/read the articles on the internet which act as a validation for their thoughts.

iovrthoughtthis 9y ago

This feels similar (but not the same!) as the "vaccines cause autism" argument. Perhaps the news was never that reliable it's just easier to see unreliable news now? It could also be that everyone got the same bias previously so it seemed more coherent. Now that stories are spun to our personal biases we individually see more sides and so things seem less coherent?

jacquesm 9y ago
> This feels similar (but not the same!) as the "vaccines cause autism" argument. Except that it isn't similar at all. The news may not have been reliable and may have always had a propaganda element in it (especially when it came to things like war coverage, royal families and so on), but it was a reasonably known quantity. The 'weaponization' of news and the horizontal interconnects between people facilitating the formation of cliques and echo chambers is as far as I can see a historically unprecedented affair. The degree to which this is responsible for the current polarization of entire societies is something that will be studied for a long time, the 'vaccines cause autism' argument is for the most part limited to the fringes rather than that it expands at the speed of light to all corners of our (global!) society.
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago
  > horizontal interconnects between people facilitating the formation of cliques and echo chambers is as far as I can see a historically unprecedented affair To give mechanism to your effect, microtargetting an audience has never been possible before the way it is today. You can assemble an in-group audience of millions before anyone outside even notices you exist. That jeapordises traditional fact-checking mechanisms.

lentil_soup 9y ago

But was there any real guarantee that "old media" was more reliable? Weren't we just getting one view of the world which we assumed was true? I agree, personalized propaganda is a nightmare.

michaelt 9y ago
Well, part of that depends on your definitions of "new" and "old" media. Some things can be readily compared - easy to compare the Washington Post of today to Washington Post of the 1970s. But many of today's subreddits, facebook pages and 4chan boards don't have a direct equivalent in the 1970s. Comparing 1970s WaPo vs 2018 WaPo will give you a different result to comparing 1970s WaPo vs (2018 WaPo + r/LateStageCapitalism + r/The_Donald)
- humanrebar 9y ago
  > But many of today's subreddits, facebook pages and 4chan boards don't have a direct equivalent in the 1970s. I'd like to subscribe to your newsletter ()! But seriously, The Birth of a Nation came out somewhat before r/RarePepes. Michael Moore films also (barely) predate social media. And people were reading about JFK assassination conspiracies and fake moon landings way before "new" media was around. () The equivalent to a niche social media group was subscribing to a niche political newsletter.
John_KZ 9y ago
With the old media everyone got the same story. It wasn't assumed to be true, because you knew who was saying this (it's hard for a large newpaper to hide their political affiliation), and the news piece was judged by other reporters on different papers and people you personally knew. Since you all were getting the same news, you could discuss them and argue about their validity. Now this just doesn't happen. Everyone gets a different news feed, which partly is the reason we need comment sections so much. And comment sections and forums were ok before the widespread use of mass censoring based on NLP or manual identification of political bias, pre-fabricated conversations, selective de-ranking and all other kinds of trickery. Simply put, it used to be that internet content was purely the result of individual personal effort, so there was something to trust behind every article, because you knew that someone was putting effort into it and getting almost nothing material in return. Now the validity of news pieces only boils down to trust, and I trust the established media more than random strangers and small companies trying to make a quick buck, because the established media can't hide lying and they have something to lose, their trustworthingness and billions of dollars. The same cannot be said for anonymous or pseudomymous internet companies that for all you know were created yesterday and will vanish tomorrow or after the next elections perhaps.

madspindel 9y ago

> printed newspapers can't change history by making edits in their articles and videos after publishing them That's a bad thing. At least when you are reading Washington Posts online article about the russian hack of the US power grid it says: "Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly said that Russian hackers had penetrated the U.S. electric grid. Authorities say there is no indication of that so far. The computer at Burlington Electric that was hacked was not attached to the grid." In old media, people would still believe it was russian goverment hacking. Now it backfired in the online world and "fake news".

einr 9y ago
That's a bad thing. At least when you are reading Washington Posts online article about the russian hack of the US power grid it says: "Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly said that Russian hackers had penetrated the U.S. electric grid. Authorities say there is no indication of that so far. The computer at Burlington Electric that was hacked was not attached to the grid." The record that a correction was made only exists if all involved parties wants it to. If the publisher/government/Google/ISP etc. has malicious intent, they could make changes silently and pretend as if nothing happened. At least with newspapers, the physical copy of the previous version will always exist (barring the implementation of totalitarian government and 1984-style memory holes, of course).
- gt_ 9y ago
  This is a actual use for blockchain that we could put into action pretty much whenever we can decide to.
  - mikepurvis 9y ago
    Or just, you know, a cache.
- dorfsmay 9y ago
  This, the ability for people controlling the media to change history, is why archive.org was created. Do think about them when you contribute to "charities", even a few dollars per year goes a long way.

mrweasel 9y ago

I don't know how the media landscape looks in other countries, but in Denmark actual news on TV is basically non-existing. There are news programming scheduled, but they often lack actual news content. Danish TV2 for instance have a "30 minute" news program at 19:00. It consist of a short news summary (3 minutes), one main story (around 7 minutes), 5 minutes for "other news items". 5 minutes for weather and 5 minutes for an "inspirational" story, which would be more fitting for an evening talkshow. There aren't real news broadcasts left on TV any more. I don't think that TV necessarily should die out, but the TV stations are slowly making themself less relevant by focusing on more, but cheaper content, rather than scaling down. Do you really need to run six channels, when you only have content for 2 or 3?

dingo_bat 9y ago
Maybe your experience is unique to Denmark. It's the opposite here in India. There are infinite number of 24 hour news channels in every language you can imagine.
- mrweasel 9y ago
  That may very well be. We do have one 24 hour news channel, but they have very little actually news.

upofadown 9y ago

Local TV news is not the type of linear streaming that is dying. The stuff that is dying is the stuff that works better as streaming such as prime time dramas. I tend to spend a lot of time these days providing advice for those installing TV antennas. People often get a TV antenna as part of the process of getting rid of cable. Local TV news is the number one reason that anyone bothers to work to get access to broadcast linear video streams. Like with many technological revolutions, the old thing will probably not go away entirely, but will contract into the niches where it is most valuable.

allpratik 9y ago

Exactly this, Personalised content is actually promoting the thoughts irrespective if they are right or wrong. And people increasingly tend to believe that what they are thinking is indeed right. Because they see/read the articles on the internet which act as a validation for their thoughts.