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It's wild how much most people rely on being in an echo chamber. It takes a psychological toll being confronted with opinions that challenge your worldview on a

It's wild how much most people rely on being in an echo chamber. It takes a psychological toll being confronted with opinions that challenge your worldview on a regular basis, especially if you cannot easily dismiss them. I haven't seen any of the things the Guardian mentions on my feed -- it's mostly startup related, software related, finance news, and science/medical stuff with maybe ~10% of posts I come across having a political tinge (I do not seek out any political discourse in my feed). But this ratio hasn't changed much in the last few years, except that the flavor of political content has moved rightward (it started off pretty left, which I also did not seek out).

grahamj 2y ago
For me it's not about the content. What would take a psychological toll is knowing I'm supporting the orange idiot's #1 fluffer.
result2vino 2y ago
I’m sick to death of everything being described as “opinions that challenge one’s worldview”. There are opinions and there are opinions. There are also philosophical differences of opinion vs things that blatantly factually untrue. Remember “alternative facts”? from the last US election? That was a thing that someone legitimately said in response to specific tangible factually incorrect statements being made about the nature of election fraud. Not wanting to be exposed to content from a news organisation that so aggressively promotes this “worldview” is not the same thing as being a thin-skinned snowflake that only wants to consume content that doesn’t challenge them. The notion that I’m meant to ingest some unfiltered firehose of utter garbage because of some incorrect notion of “all opinions are equally valid” is complete and utter bullshit.
- Sol2Sol 2y ago
  I can't high-five this enough.
- lend000 2y ago
  Is your X feed an unfiltered firehose of utter garbage? Mine isn't. That really only speaks to the fact that the algorithm finds that you are more likely to engage with garbage.
  - consteval 2y ago
    There're multiple problems here. If your feed was utter garbage, would you be able to tell? How often do you fact check tweets? For most people, I suspect it's close to never.
    - lend000 2y ago
      > If your feed was utter garbage, would you be able to tell? Lol. Same way as you or anyone else calling it utter garbage. As another comment on this thread points out, this is exactly what the Community Notes feature is for, and it's the real reason why the Guardian has been having such a rough time on X.
      - consteval 2y ago
        Right, by fact checking. If you fact check Elon's tweets and retweets, pretty much none of them are true. He, however, still has a large backing because the propaganda he promotes happens to be popular. I don't know the true reason the Guardian left X. But I do know X is overrun with disinformation, racism, and outright reality denial. I left twitter a while ago, so I'm not in a position to judge the guardian.
        lend000 2y ago
        > If you fact check Elon's tweets and retweets, pretty much none of them are true As someone who purports to care so much about facts, how can you open with this statement? This sort of behavior is why Trump won in a landslide -- people are voting against this sort of cognitive dissonance disguised as arrogance, not for Trump. > But I do know X is overrun with disinformation, racism, and outright reality denial. > I left twitter a while ago Okay. I'm picking up on a common theme amongst all the armchair experts on X -- they aren't on it and only know what has been cherry picked by their own hyper-partisan media outlets. Let's assume Elon is quite right wing and the vast majority of his personal posts are opinions masquerading as facts. Did you know you can unfollow him? How is this worse than where you get your news? I'll tell you -- in many cases, you don't know who owns your news source of choice and you don't know their agenda, but they surely have one. So basically, X is a more decentralized information system with more transparency.
standardUser 2y ago
Opinions are one thing. X has become a bastion of conspiracy theories and outright fabrications with it's hyper-partisan owner leading the charge.
unethical_ban 2y ago
You say "it's wild" and then give a reasonable explanation in the next sentence. Is it wild, or not? And are you implying that the Guardian is being "run off" because it wants X to be an echo chamber? You don't think it's a bot-infested hellhole of hate, but some den of thoughtful, nuanced, balanced discussion?
throw16180339 2y ago
> It's wild how much most people rely on being in an echo chamber. It takes a psychological toll being confronted with opinions that challenge your worldview on a regular basis, especially if you cannot easily dismiss them. I can easily dismiss antisemitic conspiracy theories, queerphobia, bigotry, and racism. There's an infinite stream of garbage positions, why would would I engage with them?
- lend000 2y ago
  As I mentioned in a sibling comment, your feed is only toxic insofar you are likely to engage with it. I have never seen a single post on my feed of the vein you are describing. By the way, there is equally ridiculous garbage on the left, if you go looking for it. You are doing the same thing that every partisan media outlet does, the oldest trick in the book: arguing against a strawman. Just because there is some leftist out there who wants to subsidize transgender operations for illegal immigrants or who wants to cancel anyone who assumes your gender, should I generalize that opinion to you and every left-leaning person on HN?
  - throw16180339 2y ago
    Elon endorsed antisemitic comments (https://www.politico.eu/article/elon-musk-row-uk-rishi-sunak-says-antisemitism-wrong-in-all-forms/ https://www.politico.eu/article/elon-musk-row-uk-rishi-sunak...) and conspiracy theories. Several studies found that there was a substantial increase in hate speech (https://www.newsguardtech.com/special-reports/twitter-misinformation-superspreaders-see-huge-spike-in-engagement-post-acquisition-by-elon-musk/ https://www.newsguardtech.com/special-reports/twitter-misinf...) after the acquisition. He substantially manipulated opinions on X to serve his own ends, most recently during the election. It's grossly misleading to compare this to a strawman.
    - lend000 2y ago
      [flagged]
  - consteval 2y ago
UltraSane 2y ago
I don't mind opinions that challenge my worldview. I despise complete lies like what Alex Jones spews.

grahamj 2y ago

For me it's not about the content. What would take a psychological toll is knowing I'm supporting the orange idiot's #1 fluffer.

result2vino 2y ago

I’m sick to death of everything being described as “opinions that challenge one’s worldview”. There are opinions and there are opinions. There are also philosophical differences of opinion vs things that blatantly factually untrue. Remember “alternative facts”? from the last US election? That was a thing that someone legitimately said in response to specific tangible factually incorrect statements being made about the nature of election fraud. Not wanting to be exposed to content from a news organisation that so aggressively promotes this “worldview” is not the same thing as being a thin-skinned snowflake that only wants to consume content that doesn’t challenge them. The notion that I’m meant to ingest some unfiltered firehose of utter garbage because of some incorrect notion of “all opinions are equally valid” is complete and utter bullshit.

Sol2Sol 2y ago
I can't high-five this enough.
lend000 2y ago
Is your X feed an unfiltered firehose of utter garbage? Mine isn't. That really only speaks to the fact that the algorithm finds that you are more likely to engage with garbage.
- consteval 2y ago
  There're multiple problems here. If your feed was utter garbage, would you be able to tell? How often do you fact check tweets? For most people, I suspect it's close to never.
  - lend000 2y ago
    > If your feed was utter garbage, would you be able to tell? Lol. Same way as you or anyone else calling it utter garbage. As another comment on this thread points out, this is exactly what the Community Notes feature is for, and it's the real reason why the Guardian has been having such a rough time on X.
    - consteval 2y ago
      Right, by fact checking. If you fact check Elon's tweets and retweets, pretty much none of them are true. He, however, still has a large backing because the propaganda he promotes happens to be popular. I don't know the true reason the Guardian left X. But I do know X is overrun with disinformation, racism, and outright reality denial. I left twitter a while ago, so I'm not in a position to judge the guardian.
      - lend000 2y ago
        > If you fact check Elon's tweets and retweets, pretty much none of them are true As someone who purports to care so much about facts, how can you open with this statement? This sort of behavior is why Trump won in a landslide -- people are voting against this sort of cognitive dissonance disguised as arrogance, not for Trump. > But I do know X is overrun with disinformation, racism, and outright reality denial. > I left twitter a while ago Okay. I'm picking up on a common theme amongst all the armchair experts on X -- they aren't on it and only know what has been cherry picked by their own hyper-partisan media outlets. Let's assume Elon is quite right wing and the vast majority of his personal posts are opinions masquerading as facts. Did you know you can unfollow him? How is this worse than where you get your news? I'll tell you -- in many cases, you don't know who owns your news source of choice and you don't know their agenda, but they surely have one. So basically, X is a more decentralized information system with more transparency.

standardUser 2y ago

Opinions are one thing. X has become a bastion of conspiracy theories and outright fabrications with it's hyper-partisan owner leading the charge.

unethical_ban 2y ago

You say "it's wild" and then give a reasonable explanation in the next sentence. Is it wild, or not? And are you implying that the Guardian is being "run off" because it wants X to be an echo chamber? You don't think it's a bot-infested hellhole of hate, but some den of thoughtful, nuanced, balanced discussion?

throw16180339 2y ago

> It's wild how much most people rely on being in an echo chamber. It takes a psychological toll being confronted with opinions that challenge your worldview on a regular basis, especially if you cannot easily dismiss them. I can easily dismiss antisemitic conspiracy theories, queerphobia, bigotry, and racism. There's an infinite stream of garbage positions, why would would I engage with them?

lend000 2y ago
As I mentioned in a sibling comment, your feed is only toxic insofar you are likely to engage with it. I have never seen a single post on my feed of the vein you are describing. By the way, there is equally ridiculous garbage on the left, if you go looking for it. You are doing the same thing that every partisan media outlet does, the oldest trick in the book: arguing against a strawman. Just because there is some leftist out there who wants to subsidize transgender operations for illegal immigrants or who wants to cancel anyone who assumes your gender, should I generalize that opinion to you and every left-leaning person on HN?
- throw16180339 2y ago
  Elon endorsed antisemitic comments (https://www.politico.eu/article/elon-musk-row-uk-rishi-sunak-says-antisemitism-wrong-in-all-forms/ https://www.politico.eu/article/elon-musk-row-uk-rishi-sunak...) and conspiracy theories. Several studies found that there was a substantial increase in hate speech (https://www.newsguardtech.com/special-reports/twitter-misinformation-superspreaders-see-huge-spike-in-engagement-post-acquisition-by-elon-musk/ https://www.newsguardtech.com/special-reports/twitter-misinf...) after the acquisition. He substantially manipulated opinions on X to serve his own ends, most recently during the election. It's grossly misleading to compare this to a strawman.
  - lend000 2y ago
    [flagged]
- consteval 2y ago

UltraSane 2y ago

I don't mind opinions that challenge my worldview. I despise complete lies like what Alex Jones spews.