5 ms·

This might just be a contrarian take on my part, but maybe we'd be better off without Google News--and most of the publishers it features. When was the last ti

by smeej 3y ago

This might just be a contrarian take on my part, but maybe we'd be better off without Google News--and most of the publishers it features. When was the last time you read a news article in any "major" news source, of the kind that typically appears on Google News, about a subject you know well and you thought, "This demonstrates an accurate understanding of even the big picture elements of the story"? I don't remember having had this experience since I was a child, decades ago. I was a teenager when I first extrapolated that if they couldn't report with even big picture accuracy on the things I did know something about, odds were that they were similarly wrong about all the things I didn't know about too. With that perspective in mind, it's come down to a question for me of whether it is good or bad for my life to be immersed, near-constantly, in stories about (usually awful) things happening in parts of the world that I can't do a thing about. I don't think it is. I think that's what leads people to feel powerless and to live in fear. It leads to this "victimer than thou" culture where people act like (and largely feel like) their only hope for surviving something difficult that might happen in their own lives would be to get enough sympathy from a large enough audience that people would actually help. Nobody feels like an agent anymore because they're constantly immersed in stories of awful things in which they don't have any agency. There's this broad cultural assumption that "one must be informed about world affairs," but it's at the expense of local affairs, the affairs we could affect. If you know about violence on the other side of the planet, but don't know that your neighbor three doors down is having trouble getting to work and at risk of losing their job because their car broke down, I'd strongly argue that your priorities are out of whack. People's lives everywhere are getting worse because we're all worrying about things far away that we can't affect rather than local problems we could actually solve. I'd just as soon see Google News shutter. I think we would all be better off without the 24-hour global news cycle.

civilitty 3y ago
It’s not the news itself at fault, it’s how sensationalized and emotionally triggering everything is designed to be from the story selection to the editorial control over titles. Everything is framed to generate either outrage or my-team-won fuzzies. I follow current events by reading the wikipedia current events portal [1] so I can stay informed without all the manipulation. It’s a completely different experience from the newsmedia: biases are still aplenty but they’re downright quaint when stacked against commercial incentives. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events
- shyn3 3y ago
  [flagged]
- Eumenes 3y ago
  Even the co-founder of Wikipedia, Larry Sanger, says the site is full of propaganda. I'd look into the sources on those current event pages, its likely the same sensationalized publications you mentioned.
mschuster91 3y ago
> I think that's what leads people to feel powerless and to live in fear. It leads to this "victimer than thou" culture where people act like (and largely feel like) their only hope for surviving something difficult that might happen in their own lives would be to get enough sympathy from a large enough audience that people would actually help. That's because of decades of "small/lean state" preachers. Be it the UK's NHS, Germany's unemployment/social security scheme, or the US healthcare/social security/pension systems, it's the same: people don't have a safety net to fallback on, other than (for some) family. They're fighting for financial or literal survival every day - just look how many people are living paycheck to paycheck, and our collective governments are doing nothing to help the 99%. No wonder the populist far-right is in an upswing.
- smeej 3y ago
  I think you have it almost exactly backward. I think it's because of decades of "daddy state" preachers telling people the government should provide the safety net people fall back on. The overwhelming majority of things that actually happen in your life could be solved by a close network of 100 or fewer family members and neighbors who helped each other out. Someone gets sick or becomes disabled, someone loses a job, a car breaks down, a house burns down, the road cracks, a store has trouble making ends meet--these things do not need national governments taxing every single resident of the country to solve them. It's exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about. There certainly are exceptions. When a dictator sends an army to bomb your whole town, your neighborhood isn't going to be able to fix that. But the overwhelming majority of things people consider "problems" could be solved by a community of 100 or fewer people who actually know each other, care about each other's lives, and are willing to work together.
  - mschuster91 3y ago
    > The overwhelming majority of things that actually happen in your life could be solved by a close network of 100 or fewer family members and neighbors who helped each other out. Housing and healthcare should be human rights, available to everyone, backed by the government, without being dependent on their family or their "near community". Imagine you're gay or trans, you live in a rural area and your family is Evangelical Christian. In a country with a strong government, you can be assured that you'll be taken care of with your basic needs. In a country that follows your ideals, you better do your best to conform to societal pressure, get a trophy wife and hide who you truly are all your life. Which environment sounds better to you? To me the answer is clear: the one with a strong government that guarantees everyone's right to live like they wish.
fullshark 3y ago
related: The Gell-Mann amnesia effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#Gell-Mann_amn... I agree entirely, I used to pay attention to the news, in part because I wanted to be knowledgable, and I guess the premise was growing up I'd eventually be part of a leadership class that would need to make big decisions based on that knowledge...but I'm frankly just a laborer, and being ignorant of the larger world is a totally reasonable and healthy position to take. The alternative seems to be to become an absolute news junkie which means a politics junkie which means a useful idiot arguing online with other useful idiots for some political movement I have no control or power over.
- telesilla 3y ago
  >being ignorant of the larger world is a totally reasonable and healthy position to take. Reasonable yes, healthy I'd debate. More importantly, if you prefer to have something of focus it would local politics, your mayor and representatives. It is often said that what happens here is more impactful on your life than what happens in national or international news. You can participate whether a new library or infrastructure is built, zoning laws, etc. You won't see this anyway on your newsfeed so it might suit you.
  - silenced_trope 3y ago
    I imagine it is healthy. I think of my mom and brother for instance, versus my dad and other brother - my dad and other brother are blissfully ignorant. My mom and younger brother get worked up over things they see in the news daily that don't affect them at all. I'd wager that stress, depression, and anxiety levels are all higher for people like my mom and younger brother than for the former.
- steveBK123 3y ago
  I wonder how much of this is the incentives effect of who wants to be a journalist. Big 3-letter national media org Journalism requires you to live in a HCOL city while accepting miserable pay at the start. Yet there are enough people interested in the field that it also requires a prestigious elite college degree, and possibly doing some unpaid internships in college. In my observation in NYC being surrounded by some of these people, it attracts A LOT of nepobabies. Even some of the famous newscasters you watched as a kid fall into this category. They, as a group, have largely chosen power over money.. but only partially because they do come from enough money to make that choice. Tons of overlap between the industry & working on political campaigns / in government admins. Who else can afford to go to Harvard, work summers for free, then move to Manhattan for a $40k salary in a flat to declining industry? Who else has the parental backstop to choose to make 1/3rd their potential income given the school they got a degree from? It's kind of a fun game looking up random people in the industry on wikipedia and observing how many have 1 or 2 parents who have their own wikipedia pages (A LOT). Even guys I deeply respected at some point like Michael Lewis, who started in the industry and knew it well.. eventually get so out of touch that their writing starts to exhibit the Gell-Mann effect.
crazygringo 3y ago
> When was the last time you read a news article in any "major" news source, of the kind that typically appears on Google News, about a subject you know well and you thought, "This demonstrates an accurate understanding of even the big picture elements of the story"? Most of the time? Maybe I don't know what you mean. Most of the news that appears via AP, Reuters, NYT, WaPo, etc. is largely factually accurate. Especially when you're looking at their core competencies of covering domestic US politics, basic foreign affairs, and domestic economics/business. E.g. they've been doing accurate jobs on factual reporting about the recent battles for house majority leader, events unfolding in Israel, and events unfolding in Ukraine. Sometimes you might be bothered with their "present both sides and don't take a stance" but it's still largely factual, accurate reporting about what is happening and what public figures are saying. If by "big picture" you mean analysis, however, that's not exactly news. Analysis is necessarily opinionated -- declaring that a public figure is lying, that another public figure ought to do X. That's not what Google News is for -- that's what publications like the Economist, the Atlantic, the New Yorker, Vox, or New York Magazine are for. (Or pick your own preferred set.) But you need both. 24 hour political and international news is very necessary for a lot of people in decision-making positions, and for people affected by a lot of these events. If it's unhealthy for you personally, then you shouldn't consume it however. For example, I read tons about politics and economics, but I don't look at crime reports stuff at all. (And Google News doesn't show it to me either, since the "For You" tab is really good at learning your preferences.)
- ghostpepper 3y ago
  It’s entirely possible to be 100% factually accurate while still presenting a slanted view of the world. The stories they choose to cover or not cover can paint a picture all on their own, not to mention which angles of which stories they focus on, which facts they choose to present in the first paragraph vs further down the article etc. I’m not saying they (Reuters, NYT, WaPo) don’t do much better fact checking than most outlets but there’s still a wide gulf between “no outright falsehoods” and “truly unbiased coverage”. I’m not entirely sure the latter even exists.
  - crazygringo 3y ago
acheron 3y ago
Absolutely agree. One thing that has only recently occurred to me is also this stuff showing up by default in new browser windows/tabs. I’ve used about:blank as my default page for probably 25 years or more, and that is probably my first configuration change on any new profile, so I don’t normally think about it, but the normies who don’t configure anything are exposed to this crap every day on their work computers. And of course the “top story” is always political clickbait for engagement and eyeballs. This cannot possibly be good or healthy.
P_I_Staker 3y ago
Google news is a mess and doesn't work. Perhaps if you had all the requisite subscriptions. As of right now, it seems to direct you to a family of many publishers with separate plans. This makes google news itself pretty hard to use. I think complaining about "paywalls" in general is stupid, but it's really hard for the news reader this way. Part of the problem for me, is it seems like it's still very hard to get away from the web 2.0 part of news anyway. Is subscribing going to reduce the clickbait journalism? Nope. I have apple news, and the quality of what I see isn't exactly encouraging me to go out and buy more subs. I will probably still get shotty, rage inducing content, just like I get on reddit. By the way this same pattern seems to hold with local stations. In fact local publishers more pay walled, for important local stories. I think you could argue these are the subs I should pay for the most.
- stevenhuang 3y ago
  Do you click the rage bait content, read it, and don't tell the recommender system to not show you things like that in the future? Because everything in my Google News is about my interests: - article about cmake from kitware - article about AI alignment from lesswrong - article physicists creating a new form of antenna from phys.org - article about benchmarking rpi5 from rpi.org - travel ad to Casa Batlo as I've just been to Spain ... I can keep scrolling and it's all articles from quality orgs on content related to my interests, without having subscribed to anything, and I get zero flame or bait content. You need to tell the recommender system you're not interested in bait content by "showing less" instead of clicking on them.
  - P_I_Staker 3y ago
    I have to wonder if I am just having a disability exploited. I think I really have trouble avoiding these ragebate stories. It's just too tempting to get in, get a rage fix and move on.

by smeej 3y ago

civilitty 3y ago

It’s not the news itself at fault, it’s how sensationalized and emotionally triggering everything is designed to be from the story selection to the editorial control over titles. Everything is framed to generate either outrage or my-team-won fuzzies. I follow current events by reading the wikipedia current events portal [1] so I can stay informed without all the manipulation. It’s a completely different experience from the newsmedia: biases are still aplenty but they’re downright quaint when stacked against commercial incentives. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events

shyn3 3y ago
[flagged]
Eumenes 3y ago
Even the co-founder of Wikipedia, Larry Sanger, says the site is full of propaganda. I'd look into the sources on those current event pages, its likely the same sensationalized publications you mentioned.

mschuster91 3y ago

> I think that's what leads people to feel powerless and to live in fear. It leads to this "victimer than thou" culture where people act like (and largely feel like) their only hope for surviving something difficult that might happen in their own lives would be to get enough sympathy from a large enough audience that people would actually help. That's because of decades of "small/lean state" preachers. Be it the UK's NHS, Germany's unemployment/social security scheme, or the US healthcare/social security/pension systems, it's the same: people don't have a safety net to fallback on, other than (for some) family. They're fighting for financial or literal survival every day - just look how many people are living paycheck to paycheck, and our collective governments are doing nothing to help the 99%. No wonder the populist far-right is in an upswing.

smeej 3y ago
I think you have it almost exactly backward. I think it's because of decades of "daddy state" preachers telling people the government should provide the safety net people fall back on. The overwhelming majority of things that actually happen in your life could be solved by a close network of 100 or fewer family members and neighbors who helped each other out. Someone gets sick or becomes disabled, someone loses a job, a car breaks down, a house burns down, the road cracks, a store has trouble making ends meet--these things do not need national governments taxing every single resident of the country to solve them. It's exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about. There certainly are exceptions. When a dictator sends an army to bomb your whole town, your neighborhood isn't going to be able to fix that. But the overwhelming majority of things people consider "problems" could be solved by a community of 100 or fewer people who actually know each other, care about each other's lives, and are willing to work together.
- mschuster91 3y ago
  > The overwhelming majority of things that actually happen in your life could be solved by a close network of 100 or fewer family members and neighbors who helped each other out. Housing and healthcare should be human rights, available to everyone, backed by the government, without being dependent on their family or their "near community". Imagine you're gay or trans, you live in a rural area and your family is Evangelical Christian. In a country with a strong government, you can be assured that you'll be taken care of with your basic needs. In a country that follows your ideals, you better do your best to conform to societal pressure, get a trophy wife and hide who you truly are all your life. Which environment sounds better to you? To me the answer is clear: the one with a strong government that guarantees everyone's right to live like they wish.

fullshark 3y ago

related: The Gell-Mann amnesia effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#Gell-Mann_amn... I agree entirely, I used to pay attention to the news, in part because I wanted to be knowledgable, and I guess the premise was growing up I'd eventually be part of a leadership class that would need to make big decisions based on that knowledge...but I'm frankly just a laborer, and being ignorant of the larger world is a totally reasonable and healthy position to take. The alternative seems to be to become an absolute news junkie which means a politics junkie which means a useful idiot arguing online with other useful idiots for some political movement I have no control or power over.

telesilla 3y ago
>being ignorant of the larger world is a totally reasonable and healthy position to take. Reasonable yes, healthy I'd debate. More importantly, if you prefer to have something of focus it would local politics, your mayor and representatives. It is often said that what happens here is more impactful on your life than what happens in national or international news. You can participate whether a new library or infrastructure is built, zoning laws, etc. You won't see this anyway on your newsfeed so it might suit you.
- silenced_trope 3y ago
  I imagine it is healthy. I think of my mom and brother for instance, versus my dad and other brother - my dad and other brother are blissfully ignorant. My mom and younger brother get worked up over things they see in the news daily that don't affect them at all. I'd wager that stress, depression, and anxiety levels are all higher for people like my mom and younger brother than for the former.
steveBK123 3y ago
I wonder how much of this is the incentives effect of who wants to be a journalist. Big 3-letter national media org Journalism requires you to live in a HCOL city while accepting miserable pay at the start. Yet there are enough people interested in the field that it also requires a prestigious elite college degree, and possibly doing some unpaid internships in college. In my observation in NYC being surrounded by some of these people, it attracts A LOT of nepobabies. Even some of the famous newscasters you watched as a kid fall into this category. They, as a group, have largely chosen power over money.. but only partially because they do come from enough money to make that choice. Tons of overlap between the industry & working on political campaigns / in government admins. Who else can afford to go to Harvard, work summers for free, then move to Manhattan for a $40k salary in a flat to declining industry? Who else has the parental backstop to choose to make 1/3rd their potential income given the school they got a degree from? It's kind of a fun game looking up random people in the industry on wikipedia and observing how many have 1 or 2 parents who have their own wikipedia pages (A LOT). Even guys I deeply respected at some point like Michael Lewis, who started in the industry and knew it well.. eventually get so out of touch that their writing starts to exhibit the Gell-Mann effect.

crazygringo 3y ago

> When was the last time you read a news article in any "major" news source, of the kind that typically appears on Google News, about a subject you know well and you thought, "This demonstrates an accurate understanding of even the big picture elements of the story"? Most of the time? Maybe I don't know what you mean. Most of the news that appears via AP, Reuters, NYT, WaPo, etc. is largely factually accurate. Especially when you're looking at their core competencies of covering domestic US politics, basic foreign affairs, and domestic economics/business. E.g. they've been doing accurate jobs on factual reporting about the recent battles for house majority leader, events unfolding in Israel, and events unfolding in Ukraine. Sometimes you might be bothered with their "present both sides and don't take a stance" but it's still largely factual, accurate reporting about what is happening and what public figures are saying. If by "big picture" you mean analysis, however, that's not exactly news. Analysis is necessarily opinionated -- declaring that a public figure is lying, that another public figure ought to do X. That's not what Google News is for -- that's what publications like the Economist, the Atlantic, the New Yorker, Vox, or New York Magazine are for. (Or pick your own preferred set.) But you need both. 24 hour political and international news is very necessary for a lot of people in decision-making positions, and for people affected by a lot of these events. If it's unhealthy for you personally, then you shouldn't consume it however. For example, I read tons about politics and economics, but I don't look at crime reports stuff at all. (And Google News doesn't show it to me either, since the "For You" tab is really good at learning your preferences.)

ghostpepper 3y ago
It’s entirely possible to be 100% factually accurate while still presenting a slanted view of the world. The stories they choose to cover or not cover can paint a picture all on their own, not to mention which angles of which stories they focus on, which facts they choose to present in the first paragraph vs further down the article etc. I’m not saying they (Reuters, NYT, WaPo) don’t do much better fact checking than most outlets but there’s still a wide gulf between “no outright falsehoods” and “truly unbiased coverage”. I’m not entirely sure the latter even exists.
- crazygringo 3y ago

acheron 3y ago

Absolutely agree. One thing that has only recently occurred to me is also this stuff showing up by default in new browser windows/tabs. I’ve used about:blank as my default page for probably 25 years or more, and that is probably my first configuration change on any new profile, so I don’t normally think about it, but the normies who don’t configure anything are exposed to this crap every day on their work computers. And of course the “top story” is always political clickbait for engagement and eyeballs. This cannot possibly be good or healthy.

P_I_Staker 3y ago

Google news is a mess and doesn't work. Perhaps if you had all the requisite subscriptions. As of right now, it seems to direct you to a family of many publishers with separate plans. This makes google news itself pretty hard to use. I think complaining about "paywalls" in general is stupid, but it's really hard for the news reader this way. Part of the problem for me, is it seems like it's still very hard to get away from the web 2.0 part of news anyway. Is subscribing going to reduce the clickbait journalism? Nope. I have apple news, and the quality of what I see isn't exactly encouraging me to go out and buy more subs. I will probably still get shotty, rage inducing content, just like I get on reddit. By the way this same pattern seems to hold with local stations. In fact local publishers more pay walled, for important local stories. I think you could argue these are the subs I should pay for the most.

stevenhuang 3y ago
Do you click the rage bait content, read it, and don't tell the recommender system to not show you things like that in the future? Because everything in my Google News is about my interests: - article about cmake from kitware - article about AI alignment from lesswrong - article physicists creating a new form of antenna from phys.org - article about benchmarking rpi5 from rpi.org - travel ad to Casa Batlo as I've just been to Spain ... I can keep scrolling and it's all articles from quality orgs on content related to my interests, without having subscribed to anything, and I get zero flame or bait content. You need to tell the recommender system you're not interested in bait content by "showing less" instead of clicking on them.
- P_I_Staker 3y ago
  I have to wonder if I am just having a disability exploited. I think I really have trouble avoiding these ragebate stories. It's just too tempting to get in, get a rage fix and move on.