5 ms·

Other media is frustrating because it's always heavily filtered, has an agenda, and always talks like a PR release. It's like they're trying to keep some image

by plonk 2y ago

Other media is frustrating because it's always heavily filtered, has an agenda, and always talks like a PR release. It's like they're trying to keep some image of a respectable paper and so have to write in that stupid title - subtitle that repeats the title - first paragraph that repeats the subtitle - 30 paragraphs in complete disorder, half of which are a waste of time format Edit: someone on Twitter obviously also has an agenda, but it's not hidden behind a supposedly impartial image (NYT, etc.), it's just some guy with known credentials posting opinions

manuelmoreale 2y ago
Here's the thing, I agree. But also, you do know that the various news sites have an agenda. It's a fact. And the way you work around it is by reading from multiple sources that have different agendas and form your own opinion based on that. The random Twitter user though? Who the fuck knows. He might be in just for the lols. Maybe they're just bored. Maybe they're actually knowledgeable. You just don't know.
- brigandish 2y ago
  That was a good strategy before sites like Twitter existed. Now, I can watch live feeds and info coming in without any journalists filtering it for me, or actually have them adding info while I consume primary sources. For example, several times in my life I happen to have caught a live stream that was reported on wildly inaccurately by legacy news media. I happened to watch, for example, the "Covington kids"[0] stream because it was trending on Twitter that day. Knowledge of that reporting travesty should be enough to shake anyone from experiencing the Gell-Mann amnesia effect, and wouldn't have been dispelled by reading several news sites because just so many were involved. Frankly, it was a disgusting and irresponsible response by said journalists and organisations and should lead people to stop reading those publications in their entirety. That's not the only example, but the idea that powerful "truth seeking" organisations should try and destroy the lives of children because of an agenda and a MAGA hat is an indictment of those organisations. It led to death threats against children. I'm happy with choosing my own sources of trust, thanks, and it won't be to read from sources that do that kind of thing. I have a thing called basic morality, and encouraging violence against children is a line I'm not willing to cross. YMMV. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Lincoln_Memorial_confrontation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Lincoln_Memorial_confront... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#Gell-Mann_amn...
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago
  > Maybe they're actually knowledgeable. You just don't know. You also don't know this about random newspaper reporters. Even the "most respected" outlets have let print some real whoppers.
  - manuelmoreale 2y ago
    Agree but if I have to bet on one or the other I'm not putting my money on the Twitter user. And you can apply the same reasoning to literally everything. You know nothing about this random doctor who's going to perform surgery. Should you perhaps let some other random guy on twitter that claims to be a surgeon do it? After all even doctors from "most respected" universities made some stupid mistakes. It's good to be skeptical in life, I'm not arguing against it. But at some point you have to trust at least something otherwise it's impossible to go through life.
    - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
      > Agree but if I have to bet on one or the other I'm not putting my money on the Twitter user. Twitter has millions of users. Some of them are actually trustworthy sources, moreso than conflicted profit-seeking media outlets. In particular, a lot of them are subject matter experts in a particular field, instead of generalists trying to summarize something they don't really understand or put a partisan spin on it. There are also more than enough less trustworthy sources. But you shouldn't feel inclined to follow the nincompoops.
      - manuelmoreale 2y ago
        I don’t disagree with your assessment. But would you agree that if we were to pluck people at random from the journalists population and from the Twitter user base, the first group has a higher probability of returning someone who’s trustworthy when it comes to news reporting? I’m not saying there aren’t trustworthy people on Twitter. After all there’s plenty of journalists. But there’s also plenty of shitposters. And random people spewing nonsense.
- squarefoot 2y ago
  > And the way you work around it is by reading from multiple sources that have different agendas and form your own opinion based on that. This, especially now that we're approaching the day when everyone could ask their personal AI to build a fake, albeit plausible, image of someone doing something wrong.
  - manuelmoreale 2y ago
    Yeah I think the most useful skill we should start teaching is critical thinking. Because it's going to be an absolutel mess navigating the digital space in the near distant future.
- jajko 2y ago
  The mental effect of 'its different from mainstream, thus better and look at me how clever I am for finding it out 5 minutes before most of group'. Teenagers love to position themselves in such roles due to insecurities, although I don't think anybody is completely immune to this. Still, don't get why regular folks are so obsessed with getting desperately the news first, unless you ie trade on it or work for Reuters. Life quality is about completely different stuff, but to each their own, maybe its just Sunday chill talking from me
  - manuelmoreale 2y ago
    I’m with you. I’m desperately trying to find a way to get slower news, even in print form. I can feel the mental strain of trying to keep up with everything that’s happening and it’s not healthy.
  - plonk 2y ago
    > The mental effect of 'its different from mainstream, thus better and look at me how clever I am for finding it out 5 minutes before most of group'. It's not because of lag time, and it's not because it's different from mainstream, it's due to growing frustration with older media that I slowly developed before I even knew about Twitter and my experience following interesting people on there. It's gotten worse since Musk, some have moved to bsky or mastodon, but it's still the best source for me. I understand your point of view but I don't find your assumption very charitable, there are real reasons for this that have been touched on.
    - jajko 2y ago
      Well, charitable for normal situations IMHO it isn't. Some sort of OCD-ish behavior re info feed. I see it on myself - the less I focus on all crap coming from news, regardless of form or source, and more I focus on my own wellbeing, my close family and friends, the happier I am. There are truly very few news which are seriously relevant to my life, and I suspect its the same for rest of us. Just because there is a big crowd of similarly-impacted folks I ain't going to normalize such toxic behavior.
- plonk 2y ago
  Some are pretty verifiable accounts from actual academics, CTOs, journalists, that's the ones I'm interested in. You can get multiple sources on one website with fewer filters, that's what makes it a good source
  - Sammi 2y ago
    That's what actually makes it a source :) You get the news from the horse's mouth.
LastTrain 2y ago
There’s a whole opaque and agenda laden algorithm determining which “guy with credentials” opinions you see, and zero standards.
- chroma 2y ago
  That's why you click on the "Following" tab, not the "For you" tab. Also, how is that any different from any other social media platform? Heck, I just opened Apple News and it recommended me a Buzzfeed article titled, "People are sharing moments where they saw millionaire's spoiled kids get humbled by the real world, and it's a trip".
  - LastTrain 2y ago
    It isn't any different, that is the point. They are all manipulating super-smart you far more than the NY Times was ever capable of doing. The fact that you think you organically found who to follow is really something.
    - brigandish 2y ago
      What would finding someone "organically" look like? Even before social media algorithms were a thing, or even before social media was a thing, information was not laid out in some random fashion, or in a way that made any of it equally likely to reach anyone. Seems like a fallacy to me.
      - LastTrain 2y ago
        I never claimed there was an organic way, I just said that “finding” who to follow on social media isn’t. You seem to agree.
_19qg 2y ago
Literally the owner of Twitter/X has an agenda and lets his employees change the algorithms to his liking. Twitter/X is filtered by algorithms selecting the contents to be visible. It's now a rage machine, to amplify right-wing populist views.
timeon 2y ago
Algorithmic social media streams are the actual Virtual Reality. The algorithm has agenda by design to create engagement. Another attribute of social media is that you are consuming information through personas not just some faceless article. This creates emotional attachment that divorces you from evaluating information in unbiased way.

by plonk 2y ago

manuelmoreale 2y ago

Here's the thing, I agree. But also, you do know that the various news sites have an agenda. It's a fact. And the way you work around it is by reading from multiple sources that have different agendas and form your own opinion based on that. The random Twitter user though? Who the fuck knows. He might be in just for the lols. Maybe they're just bored. Maybe they're actually knowledgeable. You just don't know.

brigandish 2y ago
That was a good strategy before sites like Twitter existed. Now, I can watch live feeds and info coming in without any journalists filtering it for me, or actually have them adding info while I consume primary sources. For example, several times in my life I happen to have caught a live stream that was reported on wildly inaccurately by legacy news media. I happened to watch, for example, the "Covington kids"[0] stream because it was trending on Twitter that day. Knowledge of that reporting travesty should be enough to shake anyone from experiencing the Gell-Mann amnesia effect, and wouldn't have been dispelled by reading several news sites because just so many were involved. Frankly, it was a disgusting and irresponsible response by said journalists and organisations and should lead people to stop reading those publications in their entirety. That's not the only example, but the idea that powerful "truth seeking" organisations should try and destroy the lives of children because of an agenda and a MAGA hat is an indictment of those organisations. It led to death threats against children. I'm happy with choosing my own sources of trust, thanks, and it won't be to read from sources that do that kind of thing. I have a thing called basic morality, and encouraging violence against children is a line I'm not willing to cross. YMMV. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Lincoln_Memorial_confrontation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Lincoln_Memorial_confront... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#Gell-Mann_amn...
AnthonyMouse 2y ago
> Maybe they're actually knowledgeable. You just don't know. You also don't know this about random newspaper reporters. Even the "most respected" outlets have let print some real whoppers.
- manuelmoreale 2y ago
  Agree but if I have to bet on one or the other I'm not putting my money on the Twitter user. And you can apply the same reasoning to literally everything. You know nothing about this random doctor who's going to perform surgery. Should you perhaps let some other random guy on twitter that claims to be a surgeon do it? After all even doctors from "most respected" universities made some stupid mistakes. It's good to be skeptical in life, I'm not arguing against it. But at some point you have to trust at least something otherwise it's impossible to go through life.
  - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
    > Agree but if I have to bet on one or the other I'm not putting my money on the Twitter user. Twitter has millions of users. Some of them are actually trustworthy sources, moreso than conflicted profit-seeking media outlets. In particular, a lot of them are subject matter experts in a particular field, instead of generalists trying to summarize something they don't really understand or put a partisan spin on it. There are also more than enough less trustworthy sources. But you shouldn't feel inclined to follow the nincompoops.
    - manuelmoreale 2y ago
      I don’t disagree with your assessment. But would you agree that if we were to pluck people at random from the journalists population and from the Twitter user base, the first group has a higher probability of returning someone who’s trustworthy when it comes to news reporting? I’m not saying there aren’t trustworthy people on Twitter. After all there’s plenty of journalists. But there’s also plenty of shitposters. And random people spewing nonsense.
squarefoot 2y ago
> And the way you work around it is by reading from multiple sources that have different agendas and form your own opinion based on that. This, especially now that we're approaching the day when everyone could ask their personal AI to build a fake, albeit plausible, image of someone doing something wrong.
- manuelmoreale 2y ago
  Yeah I think the most useful skill we should start teaching is critical thinking. Because it's going to be an absolutel mess navigating the digital space in the near distant future.
jajko 2y ago
The mental effect of 'its different from mainstream, thus better and look at me how clever I am for finding it out 5 minutes before most of group'. Teenagers love to position themselves in such roles due to insecurities, although I don't think anybody is completely immune to this. Still, don't get why regular folks are so obsessed with getting desperately the news first, unless you ie trade on it or work for Reuters. Life quality is about completely different stuff, but to each their own, maybe its just Sunday chill talking from me
- manuelmoreale 2y ago
  I’m with you. I’m desperately trying to find a way to get slower news, even in print form. I can feel the mental strain of trying to keep up with everything that’s happening and it’s not healthy.
- plonk 2y ago
  > The mental effect of 'its different from mainstream, thus better and look at me how clever I am for finding it out 5 minutes before most of group'. It's not because of lag time, and it's not because it's different from mainstream, it's due to growing frustration with older media that I slowly developed before I even knew about Twitter and my experience following interesting people on there. It's gotten worse since Musk, some have moved to bsky or mastodon, but it's still the best source for me. I understand your point of view but I don't find your assumption very charitable, there are real reasons for this that have been touched on.
  - jajko 2y ago
    Well, charitable for normal situations IMHO it isn't. Some sort of OCD-ish behavior re info feed. I see it on myself - the less I focus on all crap coming from news, regardless of form or source, and more I focus on my own wellbeing, my close family and friends, the happier I am. There are truly very few news which are seriously relevant to my life, and I suspect its the same for rest of us. Just because there is a big crowd of similarly-impacted folks I ain't going to normalize such toxic behavior.
plonk 2y ago
Some are pretty verifiable accounts from actual academics, CTOs, journalists, that's the ones I'm interested in. You can get multiple sources on one website with fewer filters, that's what makes it a good source
- Sammi 2y ago
  That's what actually makes it a source :) You get the news from the horse's mouth.

LastTrain 2y ago

There’s a whole opaque and agenda laden algorithm determining which “guy with credentials” opinions you see, and zero standards.

chroma 2y ago
That's why you click on the "Following" tab, not the "For you" tab. Also, how is that any different from any other social media platform? Heck, I just opened Apple News and it recommended me a Buzzfeed article titled, "People are sharing moments where they saw millionaire's spoiled kids get humbled by the real world, and it's a trip".
- LastTrain 2y ago
  It isn't any different, that is the point. They are all manipulating super-smart you far more than the NY Times was ever capable of doing. The fact that you think you organically found who to follow is really something.
  - brigandish 2y ago
    What would finding someone "organically" look like? Even before social media algorithms were a thing, or even before social media was a thing, information was not laid out in some random fashion, or in a way that made any of it equally likely to reach anyone. Seems like a fallacy to me.
    - LastTrain 2y ago
      I never claimed there was an organic way, I just said that “finding” who to follow on social media isn’t. You seem to agree.

_19qg 2y ago

Literally the owner of Twitter/X has an agenda and lets his employees change the algorithms to his liking. Twitter/X is filtered by algorithms selecting the contents to be visible. It's now a rage machine, to amplify right-wing populist views.

timeon 2y ago

Algorithmic social media streams are the actual Virtual Reality. The algorithm has agenda by design to create engagement. Another attribute of social media is that you are consuming information through personas not just some faceless article. This creates emotional attachment that divorces you from evaluating information in unbiased way.