4 ms·

I think a fundamental issue with news is that it doesn't try to push people to have a more correct mental model of the world. Some things that could change tha

by boxed 1y ago

I think a fundamental issue with news is that it doesn't try to push people to have a more correct mental model of the world. Some things that could change that: - Deep fact checking. Community Notes on twitter do a better job at this than any other system I've seen. The reason it doesn't really work in practice is that the stream of misinformation and confusion is orders of magnitude larger than the Community Notes community. A news app should not have that scalability issue. - Follow up. If I read something that later turns out to be false I need to be notified of that. This unfortunately requires that the app track what I have read. - Context. If you have a news article about a stabbing, it sounds like stabbings are up. The context that they are going up or down statistically is extremely relevant. The lack of context can turn a tiny truth into a bigger lie. - Deep confusion analysis. Figuring out where people are confused statistically and focusing on trying to manage that misinformation gap is not something that is dealt with at all. I would like to become LESS confused by information sources not more.

lyu07282 1y ago
That's just media literacy I think. I would add to that "Sourcing": if the article just parrots some press release or badly summarizes some paper, it should at least link to that but they rarely do. Then it is hard to find the primary source, because you'll only find articles about it, not the actual primary source that they bury in google search.
- boxed 1y ago
  > That's just media literacy I think The word "just" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. Systems can change. Human brains on a population/genetic level can't. Blaming individual humans when we know statistically what they will do is mathematically equivalent to giving up. Also, giving someone information that turns out to be false and never following up isn't "media literacy". I can't see how it can possibly be.
  - lyu07282 1y ago
    Absolutely, this is just what came to my mind when reading your suggestions. I meant media literacy teaches a lot of methodology that would naturally lead to your suggestions, that's all. > Systems can change. Human brains on a population/genetic level can't. Realistically we can't fix media literacy education and we can't fix journalism, both are systemically broken. But I would never blame people, everyone is the product of their environment and a victim of the system. > Also, giving someone information that turns out to be false and never following up isn't "media literacy". I can't see how it can possibly be. Media literacy in that context would just refer to reliable sourcing, reliable sources post retractions/corrections.
    - boxed 1y ago
      > Realistically we can't fix media literacy education and we can't fix journalism, both are systemically broken. But I would never blame people, everyone is the product of their environment and a victim of the system. I think it's a lot more reasonable to expect change journalism. Or maybe not journalism per se, but information dissemination/world model updates. News/journalism is just the form we've sort of settled on for that kind of job, but it's fundamentally the wrong thing. It's like asking for a faster horse when we want a car. Or asking for email notifications when we really want is a way to know the current status of something. > Media literacy in that context would just refer to reliable sourcing, reliable sources post retractions/corrections. I think the reach of those corrections is as much a problem as if they are published. Posting retractions to a printer that is directly hooked up to a shredder is technically "posting retractions", but practically it's not. Same as most news sources really. The retractions are functionally buried for almost all sources, including the most prestigious source Nature.
      - lyu07282 1y ago
        > Or maybe not journalism per se, but information dissemination/world model updates. News/journalism is just the form we've sort of settled on for that kind of job, but it's fundamentally the wrong thing. There is no particular reason to assume journalism has a future at all, why rely on a journalists biased summary of a press release and biased editorial teams prioritization of what's important. It increasingly discredits itself, with smaller concentrated ownership and blatant biased reporting (see Iraq war, Gaza genocide). Then the centralization makes it vulnerable to external malicious attacks (see Gawker). But there are so many parts that are hard to replace, credible reporting on current events and investigative journalism, that requires resources mostly only present in large organizations like the visual investigations team at the nyt. It's broken but hard to replace, especially making it decentralized. But anyway, kagi news does nothing.

by boxed 1y ago

lyu07282 1y ago

That's just media literacy I think. I would add to that "Sourcing": if the article just parrots some press release or badly summarizes some paper, it should at least link to that but they rarely do. Then it is hard to find the primary source, because you'll only find articles about it, not the actual primary source that they bury in google search.

boxed 1y ago
> That's just media literacy I think The word "just" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. Systems can change. Human brains on a population/genetic level can't. Blaming individual humans when we know statistically what they will do is mathematically equivalent to giving up. Also, giving someone information that turns out to be false and never following up isn't "media literacy". I can't see how it can possibly be.
- lyu07282 1y ago
  Absolutely, this is just what came to my mind when reading your suggestions. I meant media literacy teaches a lot of methodology that would naturally lead to your suggestions, that's all. > Systems can change. Human brains on a population/genetic level can't. Realistically we can't fix media literacy education and we can't fix journalism, both are systemically broken. But I would never blame people, everyone is the product of their environment and a victim of the system. > Also, giving someone information that turns out to be false and never following up isn't "media literacy". I can't see how it can possibly be. Media literacy in that context would just refer to reliable sourcing, reliable sources post retractions/corrections.
  - boxed 1y ago
    > Realistically we can't fix media literacy education and we can't fix journalism, both are systemically broken. But I would never blame people, everyone is the product of their environment and a victim of the system. I think it's a lot more reasonable to expect change journalism. Or maybe not journalism per se, but information dissemination/world model updates. News/journalism is just the form we've sort of settled on for that kind of job, but it's fundamentally the wrong thing. It's like asking for a faster horse when we want a car. Or asking for email notifications when we really want is a way to know the current status of something. > Media literacy in that context would just refer to reliable sourcing, reliable sources post retractions/corrections. I think the reach of those corrections is as much a problem as if they are published. Posting retractions to a printer that is directly hooked up to a shredder is technically "posting retractions", but practically it's not. Same as most news sources really. The retractions are functionally buried for almost all sources, including the most prestigious source Nature.
    - lyu07282 1y ago
      > Or maybe not journalism per se, but information dissemination/world model updates. News/journalism is just the form we've sort of settled on for that kind of job, but it's fundamentally the wrong thing. There is no particular reason to assume journalism has a future at all, why rely on a journalists biased summary of a press release and biased editorial teams prioritization of what's important. It increasingly discredits itself, with smaller concentrated ownership and blatant biased reporting (see Iraq war, Gaza genocide). Then the centralization makes it vulnerable to external malicious attacks (see Gawker). But there are so many parts that are hard to replace, credible reporting on current events and investigative journalism, that requires resources mostly only present in large organizations like the visual investigations team at the nyt. It's broken but hard to replace, especially making it decentralized. But anyway, kagi news does nothing.