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I just find it odd that someone interested in consuming news would choose to do so out of a dumpster when given a plethora of non-dumpster options.

zlg_codes 3y ago
Which non-dumpster news outlets are there? Just about every big name can be counted on to spin in favor of their owners' political aims. Fox News and friends are obvious propaganda. I've not been impressed with CBS, NBC, CNN, WaPo, The New Yorker, all sorts of outlets that I cannot rely on for truthful and relevant news. I have taken to using a website I found that combines and aggregates all the mainstream news sites, so I can see from an aerial view what -- if any -- message they're trying to sell that day. And it's weird how close in lockstep these media outlets talk about things. I see a lot of criticism on the Internet amount to "If they only used the good stuff..." So, where is it?
ethbr0 3y ago
Because it's not a dumpster. It's a casino with flashing lights, exciting noise, and free cocktails.
- labster 3y ago
  It’s the same picture.jpg
- _Algernon_ 3y ago
  A shiny, polished dumpster is still a dumpster.
delfinom 3y ago
Your average person never gave a shit about good content. That's the proof that's been visible for centuries, where there were newspapers, there were tabloids with giant click-bait headlines to make a quick buck and it always worked, because people don't want to read, they want just a headline to tell them how to feel. But those average people are the majority of "views" of said paper, that's why all these media outlets are desperate for that ad revenue. They already have subscriber bases that are actual real interest in reading content. Welcome to the sad reality of our world, crack open a cold one and laugh with the rest of us.
- roody15 3y ago
  George Carlin said "imagine how stupid the average person is then realize half of all people are stupider than that."
  - cgh 3y ago
    George Carlin didn't understand the difference between mean and median. Whether this makes him one of the stupid people is an exercise for the reader.
    - philwelch 3y ago
      Human intelligence is normally distributed which means the mean and median are the same.
      - MertsA 3y ago
        Human intelligence is arguably not even truly ordinal, let alone cardinal. No one who reasonably understands human intelligence believes it's as simple as a normal distribution. IQ is defined as a normal distribution but that doesn't mean the difference between 100 to 110 IQ is comparable to the difference between 140 and 150 IQ. If you boil "human intelligence" down to nothing more than IQ, sure, but in reality there's no such thing as a mean here and median is tenuous as well.
    - none_to_remain 3y ago
      George Carlin was smart enough to understand how to make a joke
      - edgyquant 3y ago
        Haha yeah he’s so right that most people are complete idiots. Not like us smart guys am I right brother?
        xvector 3y ago
dangus 3y ago
The techno-elites act like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok aren’t at all enjoyable when they have billions of daily active users. This is the 2020s equivalent of saying that there can’t possibly be legitimate news culture happening with Comedy Central viewers at the peak era of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. It’s just out of touch with the common person. By the way, Meta products are incredibly good at a UX and technical level. Fast loading, simple UI, and ads have a predictable layout where they don’t bloc site elements or interrupt you (much unlike a typical news website).
- olyjohn 3y ago
  Have you tried using Facebook in a web browser? It's an utter disaster. Scrolling jumps all over the place. Sometimes it just starts loading more content as you scroll, kicks you off of the post you were just reading, then just keeps scrolling around loading the page in an infinite loop. Marketplace is abysmal to try to find things on because the filters are trash, and just shows you shit you weren't searching for. Messenger is slow as fuck in every browser I have tried, and the notifications are totally inconsistent. Fucking errors all the time when I use it. I dunno to what extent you use Facebook. But it's not technically great at all, and the UX is total trash.
- alistairSH 3y ago
  and ads have a predictable layout where they don’t bloc site elements or interrupt you Are we using the same apps? My FB and Insta feeds were a steaming pile of ads and influencers and other garbage. I stopped using both because posts from people I follow were buried
  - dangus 3y ago
    “Updates from friends you know” is what elder millennials think the product is, but that’s not primarily what it is anymore. I’m talking about the endless stream of content that is the bread and butter of social media. Your friends don’t have infinite content to post. The endless stream of content product (think Reels and TikTok) is what captures 90% of users’ attention. In that context, yes, you’ll get ads and influencers shilling sponsored stuff, but you can swipe them away instantly. And my argument is that this product is very good for very many people.
chaostheory 3y ago
A lot of boomers still are not comfortable enough with navigating the internet. Apps like Facebook are easier for them.
- firecall 3y ago
  I'd put a lot of everybody into that category, to be fair to boomers. Age isn't a reasonable excuse at this point. Common access to the Internet has been with us for ~30 years.
  - alistairSH 3y ago
    Common access to the Internet has been with us for ~30 years. [deleted stuff about internet rollout at UVA in the mid-90s] Shit, that was 30 years ago. Thanks for making me feel old. ;)
  - II2II 3y ago
    It goes a bit deeper than that. Older people had to actively seek out news. They didn't have to option to go to a service operated by an global corporation that pushed the headlines to them. (Or, as I used to put it to my generation back in the day: grandma invented the computer. We simply use them.)
    - olyjohn 3y ago
      Have you ever heard of a newspaper? People subscribed with money to a newspaper. Which then delivered curated content right to their front door. They didn't go seek it out. Also, most of the newspapers are part of global corporations, even local ones.
      - II2II 3y ago
        Heard of them, and you're right about subscriptions to a degree and you're right about corporate ownership to a degree. I say to a degree vecause there are some distinct differences. At least in my neck of the woods, major newspapers were owned at a national level. Some of the stories came from international corporations (e.g. AP), but what was published tended to be local editorial decisions. You also got the same news as everyone else who subscribed to or purchased single copies of the paper. Contrast that to online news through social media sites. Chances are the editorial decisions are made in a different country, and there may not even be direct human intervention in choosing what you (as an individual) sees.
graeme 3y ago
People share links with their friends online. If you login to facebook you will see links your friends shared. This is a major source of traffic for media, along with say sharing links via imessage. Almost no one logs onto facebook with the goal of "checking the news". But they see news there and it adds up to a lot of traffic because Facebook and instagram are huge. (The media posts clips to Facebook and Instagram and these can show up in feeds too if the post is popular enough)
- xp84 3y ago
  Not wrong at all. But also after like 15 years of this mechanism, I’m comfortable ruling it as very, very not worth it. Compared to before FB had this format, do we even think the average person even reads more actual journalism than before? Pretty sure most of the “articles” people find through social media are more like ragebait from the political fringes because that’s what gets the views, clicks, comments, and reshares. In light of that, a world with no news on Facebook would be just fine. If anyone is that uninterested in news that they would never check out a news site directly on their own, they won’t miss it.
nonethewiser 3y ago
Junk food
Broken_Hippo 3y ago
Do you also think it is odd that news consumers would then want to possibly discuss or share the news with people they know? Because that's the reason. Folks interested in news tend to talk about it with other folks interested - and that has happened long before the internet. In some cases, it is pretty similar to leaving a newspaper in a fast food place: Let folks you don't see much (or at all) read that stuff as well. It doesn't always matter if other options are better - folks work with what they have. Similar to wanting to talk to someone more intelligent about the news, but still talking about it with the folks you have around.
- xp84 3y ago
  > news consumers would then want to possibly discuss or share the news with people they know? I don’t witness that happening though. When I see “news” posted by people on FB, I usually see a despairing one-line intro at most, and a link. Then the comments are a bunch of me-toos or, for those with unkempt friend lists of everyone they’ve ever met, a raucous flame war. The other “news” is posted by the sites themselves or by large political Pages or Groups. Those are exclusively the “flame war” variety, 1000 strangers screaming into the void pointlessly. So (imo) nothing of value would be lost by abolishing the whole concept of news on social media. If you want a place where sane people can have a virtual water cooler discussion about the day’s news stories with friends they know, those friends should just set up a group text or a Discord.
frumper 3y ago
A link to CNN from Facebook is the same as going to CNN. You can replace that with whatever source you think is a non-dumpster option.

zlg_codes 3y ago

Which non-dumpster news outlets are there? Just about every big name can be counted on to spin in favor of their owners' political aims. Fox News and friends are obvious propaganda. I've not been impressed with CBS, NBC, CNN, WaPo, The New Yorker, all sorts of outlets that I cannot rely on for truthful and relevant news. I have taken to using a website I found that combines and aggregates all the mainstream news sites, so I can see from an aerial view what -- if any -- message they're trying to sell that day. And it's weird how close in lockstep these media outlets talk about things. I see a lot of criticism on the Internet amount to "If they only used the good stuff..." So, where is it?

ethbr0 3y ago

Because it's not a dumpster. It's a casino with flashing lights, exciting noise, and free cocktails.

labster 3y ago
It’s the same picture.jpg
_Algernon_ 3y ago
A shiny, polished dumpster is still a dumpster.

delfinom 3y ago

Your average person never gave a shit about good content. That's the proof that's been visible for centuries, where there were newspapers, there were tabloids with giant click-bait headlines to make a quick buck and it always worked, because people don't want to read, they want just a headline to tell them how to feel. But those average people are the majority of "views" of said paper, that's why all these media outlets are desperate for that ad revenue. They already have subscriber bases that are actual real interest in reading content. Welcome to the sad reality of our world, crack open a cold one and laugh with the rest of us.

roody15 3y ago
George Carlin said "imagine how stupid the average person is then realize half of all people are stupider than that."
- cgh 3y ago
  George Carlin didn't understand the difference between mean and median. Whether this makes him one of the stupid people is an exercise for the reader.
  - philwelch 3y ago
    Human intelligence is normally distributed which means the mean and median are the same.
    - MertsA 3y ago
      Human intelligence is arguably not even truly ordinal, let alone cardinal. No one who reasonably understands human intelligence believes it's as simple as a normal distribution. IQ is defined as a normal distribution but that doesn't mean the difference between 100 to 110 IQ is comparable to the difference between 140 and 150 IQ. If you boil "human intelligence" down to nothing more than IQ, sure, but in reality there's no such thing as a mean here and median is tenuous as well.
  - none_to_remain 3y ago
    George Carlin was smart enough to understand how to make a joke
    - edgyquant 3y ago
      Haha yeah he’s so right that most people are complete idiots. Not like us smart guys am I right brother?
      - xvector 3y ago

dangus 3y ago

The techno-elites act like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok aren’t at all enjoyable when they have billions of daily active users. This is the 2020s equivalent of saying that there can’t possibly be legitimate news culture happening with Comedy Central viewers at the peak era of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. It’s just out of touch with the common person. By the way, Meta products are incredibly good at a UX and technical level. Fast loading, simple UI, and ads have a predictable layout where they don’t bloc site elements or interrupt you (much unlike a typical news website).

olyjohn 3y ago
Have you tried using Facebook in a web browser? It's an utter disaster. Scrolling jumps all over the place. Sometimes it just starts loading more content as you scroll, kicks you off of the post you were just reading, then just keeps scrolling around loading the page in an infinite loop. Marketplace is abysmal to try to find things on because the filters are trash, and just shows you shit you weren't searching for. Messenger is slow as fuck in every browser I have tried, and the notifications are totally inconsistent. Fucking errors all the time when I use it. I dunno to what extent you use Facebook. But it's not technically great at all, and the UX is total trash.
alistairSH 3y ago
and ads have a predictable layout where they don’t bloc site elements or interrupt you Are we using the same apps? My FB and Insta feeds were a steaming pile of ads and influencers and other garbage. I stopped using both because posts from people I follow were buried
- dangus 3y ago
  “Updates from friends you know” is what elder millennials think the product is, but that’s not primarily what it is anymore. I’m talking about the endless stream of content that is the bread and butter of social media. Your friends don’t have infinite content to post. The endless stream of content product (think Reels and TikTok) is what captures 90% of users’ attention. In that context, yes, you’ll get ads and influencers shilling sponsored stuff, but you can swipe them away instantly. And my argument is that this product is very good for very many people.

chaostheory 3y ago

A lot of boomers still are not comfortable enough with navigating the internet. Apps like Facebook are easier for them.

firecall 3y ago
I'd put a lot of everybody into that category, to be fair to boomers. Age isn't a reasonable excuse at this point. Common access to the Internet has been with us for ~30 years.
- alistairSH 3y ago
  Common access to the Internet has been with us for ~30 years. [deleted stuff about internet rollout at UVA in the mid-90s] Shit, that was 30 years ago. Thanks for making me feel old. ;)
- II2II 3y ago
  It goes a bit deeper than that. Older people had to actively seek out news. They didn't have to option to go to a service operated by an global corporation that pushed the headlines to them. (Or, as I used to put it to my generation back in the day: grandma invented the computer. We simply use them.)
  - olyjohn 3y ago
    Have you ever heard of a newspaper? People subscribed with money to a newspaper. Which then delivered curated content right to their front door. They didn't go seek it out. Also, most of the newspapers are part of global corporations, even local ones.
    - II2II 3y ago
      Heard of them, and you're right about subscriptions to a degree and you're right about corporate ownership to a degree. I say to a degree vecause there are some distinct differences. At least in my neck of the woods, major newspapers were owned at a national level. Some of the stories came from international corporations (e.g. AP), but what was published tended to be local editorial decisions. You also got the same news as everyone else who subscribed to or purchased single copies of the paper. Contrast that to online news through social media sites. Chances are the editorial decisions are made in a different country, and there may not even be direct human intervention in choosing what you (as an individual) sees.

graeme 3y ago

People share links with their friends online. If you login to facebook you will see links your friends shared. This is a major source of traffic for media, along with say sharing links via imessage. Almost no one logs onto facebook with the goal of "checking the news". But they see news there and it adds up to a lot of traffic because Facebook and instagram are huge. (The media posts clips to Facebook and Instagram and these can show up in feeds too if the post is popular enough)

xp84 3y ago
Not wrong at all. But also after like 15 years of this mechanism, I’m comfortable ruling it as very, very not worth it. Compared to before FB had this format, do we even think the average person even reads more actual journalism than before? Pretty sure most of the “articles” people find through social media are more like ragebait from the political fringes because that’s what gets the views, clicks, comments, and reshares. In light of that, a world with no news on Facebook would be just fine. If anyone is that uninterested in news that they would never check out a news site directly on their own, they won’t miss it.

nonethewiser 3y ago

Junk food

Broken_Hippo 3y ago

Do you also think it is odd that news consumers would then want to possibly discuss or share the news with people they know? Because that's the reason. Folks interested in news tend to talk about it with other folks interested - and that has happened long before the internet. In some cases, it is pretty similar to leaving a newspaper in a fast food place: Let folks you don't see much (or at all) read that stuff as well. It doesn't always matter if other options are better - folks work with what they have. Similar to wanting to talk to someone more intelligent about the news, but still talking about it with the folks you have around.

xp84 3y ago
> news consumers would then want to possibly discuss or share the news with people they know? I don’t witness that happening though. When I see “news” posted by people on FB, I usually see a despairing one-line intro at most, and a link. Then the comments are a bunch of me-toos or, for those with unkempt friend lists of everyone they’ve ever met, a raucous flame war. The other “news” is posted by the sites themselves or by large political Pages or Groups. Those are exclusively the “flame war” variety, 1000 strangers screaming into the void pointlessly. So (imo) nothing of value would be lost by abolishing the whole concept of news on social media. If you want a place where sane people can have a virtual water cooler discussion about the day’s news stories with friends they know, those friends should just set up a group text or a Discord.

frumper 3y ago

A link to CNN from Facebook is the same as going to CNN. You can replace that with whatever source you think is a non-dumpster option.