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Prioritize sources where I understand some motivation beyond traffic/ads for the existence of that source. Non-profits dedicated to providing information (Wikip

Prioritize sources where I understand some motivation beyond traffic/ads for the existence of that source. Non-profits dedicated to providing information (Wikipedia, MDN), individual people I am familiar enough with to believe genuine interest in their topic, publicly-funded yet independent journalistic outlets, documentation written by the actual author of software, etc. I often find these in my Google/DDG searches, after scrolling past the things I know to be “otherwise” motivated.

logicalmonster 5y ago
I think taking into account human motivation is a very smart system, but the motivations of a lot of what you mentioned aren’t necessarily aligned with everybody. Take Wikipedia for example: it started nobly but has become an ideological battleground for petty editors to wield influence when you look at what kinds of edits are made to important current day topics. Or take non-profits: I’m sure many of their employees have fine motivations, but in a big picture sense the organization dies if they actually solve the problem they’re designed to solve. It’s hard to perfectly trust the motivations of even non-profits. As far as publicly funded journalistic outlets, do you mean stuff like NPR? Without getting into an argument about NPR, there’s a substantial amount of real criticism about them out there. It’s hard for many to perfectly trust them either. The best system I think is trusting independently minded journalists who have developed some credibility: namely those willing to take real shots against their own “team”. I’m open to finding others, but the best one in this regard that I’ve come across might be Glenn Greenwald. Time and time again, he’s willing to take shots against his own political side, even when it damages his career: that carries some credibility with me. I’d love to find more independent journalists like that.
- thenoblesunfish 4y ago
  You're correct that every individual source has biases and imperfections, so I think it's also essential to have multiple sources. I think that as long as you have a set of "good enough" and "diverse enough" sources, you can form an accurate idea of the truth by synthesizing what you read. Greenwald is a great example of that - definitely seems to be motivated in the right way, but wouldn't be a great single source of news. By publicly funded I mean things like NPR, the BBC, or their equivalents in other countries. Not perfect, but I believe that there's enough motivation there related to doing good journalism for its own sake, that I would include those sources in the "good enough" category.

logicalmonster 5y ago

I think taking into account human motivation is a very smart system, but the motivations of a lot of what you mentioned aren’t necessarily aligned with everybody. Take Wikipedia for example: it started nobly but has become an ideological battleground for petty editors to wield influence when you look at what kinds of edits are made to important current day topics. Or take non-profits: I’m sure many of their employees have fine motivations, but in a big picture sense the organization dies if they actually solve the problem they’re designed to solve. It’s hard to perfectly trust the motivations of even non-profits. As far as publicly funded journalistic outlets, do you mean stuff like NPR? Without getting into an argument about NPR, there’s a substantial amount of real criticism about them out there. It’s hard for many to perfectly trust them either. The best system I think is trusting independently minded journalists who have developed some credibility: namely those willing to take real shots against their own “team”. I’m open to finding others, but the best one in this regard that I’ve come across might be Glenn Greenwald. Time and time again, he’s willing to take shots against his own political side, even when it damages his career: that carries some credibility with me. I’d love to find more independent journalists like that.

thenoblesunfish 4y ago
You're correct that every individual source has biases and imperfections, so I think it's also essential to have multiple sources. I think that as long as you have a set of "good enough" and "diverse enough" sources, you can form an accurate idea of the truth by synthesizing what you read. Greenwald is a great example of that - definitely seems to be motivated in the right way, but wouldn't be a great single source of news. By publicly funded I mean things like NPR, the BBC, or their equivalents in other countries. Not perfect, but I believe that there's enough motivation there related to doing good journalism for its own sake, that I would include those sources in the "good enough" category.