6 ms·

Being born in 83, I experienced the shift from "serious local nightly news program" into the 24 hr cable news platforms as a loss of focused, serious journalism

by NiloCK 10mo ago

Being born in 83, I experienced the shift from "serious local nightly news program" into the 24 hr cable news platforms as a loss of focused, serious journalism. Only much later did I read Understanding Media, Amusing Ourselves to Death, etc, and understand that the prior shift from print to the "serious local nightly new program" was itself a loss of focused, serious journalism. For today's youth, Tik Tok is "the air we breath" - the de-facto standard against which the future will be judged. It's horrifying to imagine what will be worse.

startupsfail 10mo ago
I'm curious, is there some meaningful way for geriatric millennials to use Tik Tok? Without being sucked in into doomscrolling and content consumption? Produce content? I'd guess it should be possible to play with the thing somehow...
- wussboy 10mo ago
  Why? Just leave it be, and your life will be just as rich if not richer.
  - aGHz 10mo ago
    I think one good reason is connecting with the youth. My kids are too young for Tik Tok but old enough to come home with 6-7 (btw, best antidote to that is the 7-8-9 joke ;) ) and "chicken banana", and I'm told this comes from Tik Tok. I grew up in a house where every BSOD was caused by the fact that we installed video games, and I'd rather not be that kind of parent to my own kids. I'm also like GP though, I'd rather not go full scrollhead, so it's a bit of a dilemma.
    - peruvian 10mo ago
      You can search TikTok memes on YouTube. People upload them. You using TikTok earnestly would result in a feed vastly different from your kids anyway.
    - progval 10mo ago
      Would you even see the same videos they do, given how customized feeds are?
    - nosianu 10mo ago
      As a former child, I'm not sure I would have wanted the adults mimicking my behavior. Back then I loved the occasions where the adults and us kids got together, such as festivities, and I got to hear their stories. They were all interesting and serious people though, with interesting lives and jobs (I was born in the 1970s and many of the adults had experienced WWII, or, the parents, the hard years following it - I am [East] German). No strange opinions about science or politics. I think that's similar to when politicians try to "be like the people". I think "normal people", and children, prefer that their "betters" are actually examples of something better.
      - JKCalhoun 10mo ago
        Agree. Your role as a parent is probably to serve as an example to them—even of old-fashioned, crufty ways. (Surprised/not-surprised to find my kids are curious about film cameras, vinyl, audio cassettes, MUDs, BBS'es…)
      - startupsfail 10mo ago
        It's not a question of mimicking, it is interesting what is current within the teenage/student community. Adult population runs out of steam at some point.
- scarecrowbob 10mo ago
  To be honest, it's pretty easy to surface useful content on TT. Its algorithm is far more responsive to, say, immediate skips and likes/follows than Ig or FB. I have found it a lot easier to find a diversity of opinions from a more diverse group of folks there. Specifically, I have been really interested in what leftist/liberal bipoc folks think about current events, and it's very easy to get that content. And it's easy enough to flip quickly past hoteps and maga black men, who I don't usually care about hearing from. The disussions between say, black anarchists, pro-Harris DNC folks, and afropessimists have been very enlightening, personally. Those aren't conversations I have been able to find on, say, Ig. The main thing is that it pays a lot of attention to what you actually stop and watch, so if you let your attention wander you might end up watching folks rebuild industrial electric motors or paint warhammer minis. Honestly, I think it's a lot less mind numbing than the last bits of broadcast TV or feature films folks have inflicted on me, regardless of folks enjoying their ability to hate on it.
  - mlrtime 10mo ago
    I've tried multiple times with a TikTok account to get me useful videos and its always kids playing some weird games. FB/YT are much better and instantly switching content when I skip past a video. TikTok is unusable for me.
    - divan 10mo ago
      I get a lot of stuff I care about (some scientific papers overviews, blender/davinci editing tips and tricks, bits of high-quality podcasts) on tiktok, even if I just go for 5 minutes to entertain myself with some audio-visual crap. Mention of its algorithm being responsive matches my observations here.
- veqq 10mo ago
  There is no meaningful way to use it.
- sundarurfriend 10mo ago
  We don't have TikTok here (India), but I find YouTube shorts pretty useful. My feed is a mix of Action Labs shorts, Omar Agamy news, ZTT PC stuff, psychology, videos about animals (pet, domestic, wild), etc. I don't know what your standard for meaningful is, but the shorts are at least as useful as long form videos to me, if not more. An important bit of context is that I prefer to get detailed information through text, research, sometimes podcasts, but rarely ever videos. The shorts serve as one low effort way (among others) for me to surface new potentially interesting things, to follow up on to the degree I find useful or interesting.
- amatecha 10mo ago
  My general view on TikTok is: why would I even remotely want to use something that's specifically designed to exploit me and manipulate me? The tiny shred of value I might experience (in the form of an occasional interesting video) is a side-effect of the service, and if they could get their value out of me and give me literally nothing at all, they would. This same perspective applies to all the centralized "social media" services out there today. None of them exist to make society better or improve the lives of anyone in any meaningful way (outside of enriching the executives and investors running them).
  - JKCalhoun 10mo ago
    Yeah, in fact I'm trying to wend myself away from the internet generally. (Sure don't need more of that shit.)
  - theshrike79 10mo ago
    To be frank, the TikTok algorithm is the best of all the algorithmic doomscroll machines you can use. Instagram is trash, Youtube Shorts is complete AI puke trash. TikTok actually seems to "know" what I like seeing and clearly learns faster than the others. A quick test just now: - Video about Amiga 500 in the 90s in Finland - A running gag about people having a Favourite Spoon - A recipe for Bao Buns - A skit about Japanese Shisa Kanko pointing and calling method - Book reviews of someone's favourite books of 2025 - Someone tried to do floor work and found a massive shaft leading down under their house Zero ads. All were from "real" people, not content farm accounts. Instagram reels: - A "family account" skit, yech - Ad - A verified account reposting other's videos - Another one of those - Ad - A meme account - A meme account - Ad Not even touching Youtube Shorts, they're even worse.
    - amatecha 9mo ago
      That's cool, but yeah I won't use it regardless (just like I won't use any of the services you mentioned). It's all for-profit centralized extractive/exploitative stuff.
- glenngillen 10mo ago
  I hear a lot of people be incredibly critical of TikTok, while being active consumers of Facebook/Instagram/X/etc. I've found the content on TikTok to be much better curated to what I actually like, with just enough (i.e., very little!) other content sprinkled in occasionally. I asked someone a similar question to you a year ago and they told me something like "just spend 15 minutes with it. Aggressively swipe past things you aren't enjoying, like the the things you like. Search for something you are interested in too and like anything you like there". My feed is currently entirely basketball coaching tips for kids, cooking & recipes, stand up comedy, basic DIY, fitness/running tips, local restaurant recommendations, and sports highlights.
- einpoklum 10mo ago
  Closed-source, very-limited-API platforms like Tik Tok do not actually let you "play with the thing". What I imagine you would be interested in is a client which, say, gets the text version of a large number of short videos, filters those texts based on criteria you have defined and meta-data from TikTok (time, number of views, some proxies for a 'quality' measure) and serves you up with the results in a textual form, or perhaps a page with titles/summaries and links to the text and the video. I'm not sure that's worth it but I'm willing to be this is not possible to achieve.
oldsj 10mo ago
[flagged]
- harvey9 10mo ago
  This site is showing me two speeches and some AI 'analysis'. The analysis is very shallow.
gamesbrainiac 10mo ago
Amusing ourselves to death was such an eye opener for me when I was 19. After that I never took the news seriously.
DavidPiper 10mo ago
I'll always upvote a recommendation for Amusing Ourselves to Death. I haven't yet gone back to Understanding Media directly yet. I haven't watched the news in 5 years. I started watching it again since Bondi (I live nearby), and while I'm surprised at the variation in reporting styles (political bias?) between Australian channels, my overwhelming observation has been just how little key information is actually conveyed. I've found it very helpful to watch the live briefings, Q&As, etc with politicians, but the news cycle here is so short (hourly) that a few minutes later you get to hear a "recap" by the news reporter that glosses over most of the important and interesting points (at best) or actively removes key nuance and outright changes the message delivered by the original person (at worst). I feel there has to be something between "I heard about a thing 7th-hand" and "I actively watch political discourse / read scientific papers", but I'm no longer sure The News, as we currently know it, is it. Presumably this was what "journalism" was originally supposed to be.
- john01dav 10mo ago
  > I feel there has to be something between "I heard about a thing 7th-hand" and "I actively watch political discourse / read scientific papers", but I'm no longer sure The News, as we currently know it, is it. I have found that some Youtube channels and videos (non-comprehensive examples below (I have hundreds of subscribed channels), mostly not politics, but these things inform politics since politics is making decisions about other things) can fill this gap nicely. This is not a perfect choice, since journalism integrity and standards do not apply, but I find that this can be mitigated by watching a wide variety (for example, in the field of economics, I regularly watch creators who espouse everything from very free-market capitalism all the way to full on communism). There are likely other forms of new media that operate at this level of depth, but I haven't found htem. https://www.youtube.com/@TechnologyConnections https://www.youtube.com/@TechnologyConnections https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWUaS5a50DI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWUaS5a50DI https://www.youtube.com/@HowMoneyWorks https://www.youtube.com/@HowMoneyWorks https://www.youtube.com/@DiamondNestEgg https://www.youtube.com/@DiamondNestEgg https://www.youtube.com/@TLDRnews https://www.youtube.com/@TLDRnews (and associated channels) https://www.youtube.com/@BennJordan https://www.youtube.com/@BennJordan (recent good example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vU1-uiUlHTo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vU1-uiUlHTo)
BrenBarn 10mo ago
Even when I was younger, I was baffled by how people could get their news just from TV, because the amount of information in a TV news report was so tiny compared to what you'd get in a newspaper. When I hear that people view TikTok as their main news source, it's like telling me people wear watermelons as socks. It's so nuts its hard for me to even bring the concept into my brain.
- carlosjobim 10mo ago
  The TV will have maybe 5 stories, each told in one way only. The Internet (including TikTok) will have nearly unlimited stories, told in unlimited ways. I remember very well when just a few powerful people were allowed to decide what the public would be allowed to know and not know. They could suppress huge stories and leave the public in the dark. For example Chernobyl. They still try that today in print media and television, but have become a pathetic laughing stock now that information is free. Somebody getting news from TikTok will probably be better informed than somebody relying only on print or TV.
  - embedding-shape 10mo ago
    > Somebody getting news from TikTok will probably be better informed than somebody relying only on print or TV. Possible, but also quite unlikely. From the people who post "news" on TikTok, I wonder how many spent at least 30-60 minutes on verifying what they're about to post? There is an endless sea of "influencers" who want to be first with posting something, that "validate what you're about to report" doesn't even enter the arena before they've posted their snippet. And if it's retracted, count on the video just silently disappearing. Contrast that with TV and print that at least have some sort of validation, although imperfect, with editors and what not, that review things before they're published. Now of course, US media is a really shit example of proper journalism, as they've all fallen into basically doing "content creation", but if you look at other newspapers and news channels around the world, you'll see that proper journalism is still done, and the people pushing videos on TikTok usually do "content creation" very differently from TV and paper, with very different understanding of what they're actually contributing to.
  - 10mo ago
nvarsj 10mo ago
> For today's youth, Tik Tok is "the air we breath" - the de-facto standard against which the future will be judged. It's horrifying to imagine what will be worse. So your argument is centrally controlled and edited distribution of news information is superior? I was born in 82, and news has been largely rubbish in almost all forms. Heavily biased by the editors/owners, things missing, weird focuses. The 1940s was filled with propaganda and newspapers were owned by a few moguls or by fascist governments. At least with the uncensored internet it's possible to educate yourself. There is plenty of amazing journalism if you look around. Including on Tik Tok!
- christophilus 10mo ago
  Yep. I remember my dad quoting some major news anchor as saying, “My job isn’t to report the news; it’s to shape perception.” Or something like that. I started watching the news with that as my lens, and it seems to be an axiom of the entire industry. I never have managed to find a reliable way to filter the signal from the noise, other than watching / reading the direct sources (CSPAN or whatnot). No one has time for that.
- analyst74 10mo ago
  News has never been about reporting absolute truth, there is just too much influence/power/money to be gained for manipulating public perception. The fact that people believe in journalistic integrity shows how successful they are at brainwashing the public.
BrtByte 10mo ago
Every generation experiences the current downgrade as catastrophic, only to later discover it was already a compromise layered on top of an earlier one
- embedding-shape 10mo ago
  So if we try to walk up all the ladders of abstractions and get to the core where we cannot go yet another layer above, what we end up? Word of mouth basically?
- hallole 10mo ago
  I think, at a minimum, a return to print or radio news is called for. They necessitate attentive consumption of information in a way that video just doesn't. I feel like they leave mental space open for critical thought. TikTok is the total opposite.
  - ben_w 10mo ago
    I don't know how bad TikTok is because shorts just don't grab hold of me hard enough to even look at the app, at most I see someone else sharing a short of something silly on a meme channel. But… and I appreciate you did say "at a minimum"… Radio is absolutely something you can have on in the background, vibrating your eardrums without engaging your attention. Intentionality may be impossible in TikTok for all I know, but it isn't enough to just do radio, and I think also not print.
Razengan 10mo ago
Why do people rag on TikTok? What the hell did you grow up on and did your parents and older folks from the previous generation not look down on that with a sigh or disgust?? Rock music? Rap? Video games?? In East Asia I see TikTok as pretty healthy, encouraging kids and even older people to be more active in public spaces, doing harmless dances or imitating other trends. It's actually pretty refreshing. Why you hatin? Or is the West just salty that Facebook/YouTube/Instagram etc fell off as sterile in comparison?
- krapp 10mo ago
  I can actually remember when the consensus on HN was that TikTok was a novel, fresh experience that reminded them of the "old web" and its spark of creativity. Now the consensus seems to be that it's a Chinese mind-control tool and it represents everything the misanthropes here hate about modern culture, the web and the generations that participate in it. It seems to be exactly the same generational impulse as our parents railing against the "boob tube" and "devil music" or (to quote RMS) "(c)rap music." Although they weren't entirely wrong they weren't nearly as correct as they insisted they were. I suspect the same is true about the current moral panic around social media, and TikTok in general. Yes there are legitimate concerns, but it isn't the ontological evil people make it out to be either. It isn't actually controlling people's minds. It isn't actually more addictive than heroin. And to answer NiloCK without another comment, what's worse will be "TikTok but everything is AI generated by the platform itself." Say what you will about TikTok, at least a lot of it is still human expression.
  - JKCalhoun 10mo ago
    > Now the consensus seems to be that it's a Chinese mind-control tool and it represents everything the misanthropes here hate about modern culture, the web and the generations that participate in it. If you drop the word "Chinese" and "misanthrope" I'm in board with your description.
    - Razengan 10mo ago
      > If you drop the word "Chinese" (a mind-control tool) So no worse than FB etc. then, even Reddit and HN where certain views are promoted and others buried.
softwaredoug 10mo ago
There is a flip side to this. Yes it was stabilizing to have “boring” news where every provider largely had the same stories. But there was a narrower Overton window of issues to be discussed. A single thread of attention at any one time. There are advantages to the disjointed, small, grassroots, often histrionic, news of today. We get a lot more perspectives in our news. We get so many it’s overwhelming (and we sadly need to jump into our corners to feel safe). Anyone can start a Substack now and the market can decide if they’re a journalist. In my town there are several more trusted and prominent than the local broadcast news. Some specialize in a topic like housing. Some focus on govt going’s on. And of course there are local nutjobs (or I think they are, others disagree? It’s messy and not nearly summarized, but in some ways it’s better and more detailed than bland evening news.
- Tagbert 10mo ago
  Current news media is even more narrowly focused on the three hot news stories of the day with 24-hour repetitive commentary all funneled into the narrative of the day.
  - softwaredoug 10mo ago
    Yes though cable news is in a gradual decline https://www.adweek.com/tvnewser/here-are-the-cable-news-ratings-for-october-2025 https://www.adweek.com/tvnewser/here-are-the-cable-news-rati... The real action in news media is in flagship newspapers (WSJ, NY Times), podcasts, substacks..

by NiloCK 10mo ago

startupsfail 10mo ago

I'm curious, is there some meaningful way for geriatric millennials to use Tik Tok? Without being sucked in into doomscrolling and content consumption? Produce content? I'd guess it should be possible to play with the thing somehow...

wussboy 10mo ago
Why? Just leave it be, and your life will be just as rich if not richer.
- aGHz 10mo ago
  I think one good reason is connecting with the youth. My kids are too young for Tik Tok but old enough to come home with 6-7 (btw, best antidote to that is the 7-8-9 joke ;) ) and "chicken banana", and I'm told this comes from Tik Tok. I grew up in a house where every BSOD was caused by the fact that we installed video games, and I'd rather not be that kind of parent to my own kids. I'm also like GP though, I'd rather not go full scrollhead, so it's a bit of a dilemma.
  - peruvian 10mo ago
    You can search TikTok memes on YouTube. People upload them. You using TikTok earnestly would result in a feed vastly different from your kids anyway.
  - progval 10mo ago
    Would you even see the same videos they do, given how customized feeds are?
  - nosianu 10mo ago
    As a former child, I'm not sure I would have wanted the adults mimicking my behavior. Back then I loved the occasions where the adults and us kids got together, such as festivities, and I got to hear their stories. They were all interesting and serious people though, with interesting lives and jobs (I was born in the 1970s and many of the adults had experienced WWII, or, the parents, the hard years following it - I am [East] German). No strange opinions about science or politics. I think that's similar to when politicians try to "be like the people". I think "normal people", and children, prefer that their "betters" are actually examples of something better.
    - JKCalhoun 10mo ago
      Agree. Your role as a parent is probably to serve as an example to them—even of old-fashioned, crufty ways. (Surprised/not-surprised to find my kids are curious about film cameras, vinyl, audio cassettes, MUDs, BBS'es…)
    - startupsfail 10mo ago
      It's not a question of mimicking, it is interesting what is current within the teenage/student community. Adult population runs out of steam at some point.
scarecrowbob 10mo ago
To be honest, it's pretty easy to surface useful content on TT. Its algorithm is far more responsive to, say, immediate skips and likes/follows than Ig or FB. I have found it a lot easier to find a diversity of opinions from a more diverse group of folks there. Specifically, I have been really interested in what leftist/liberal bipoc folks think about current events, and it's very easy to get that content. And it's easy enough to flip quickly past hoteps and maga black men, who I don't usually care about hearing from. The disussions between say, black anarchists, pro-Harris DNC folks, and afropessimists have been very enlightening, personally. Those aren't conversations I have been able to find on, say, Ig. The main thing is that it pays a lot of attention to what you actually stop and watch, so if you let your attention wander you might end up watching folks rebuild industrial electric motors or paint warhammer minis. Honestly, I think it's a lot less mind numbing than the last bits of broadcast TV or feature films folks have inflicted on me, regardless of folks enjoying their ability to hate on it.
- mlrtime 10mo ago
  I've tried multiple times with a TikTok account to get me useful videos and its always kids playing some weird games. FB/YT are much better and instantly switching content when I skip past a video. TikTok is unusable for me.
  - divan 10mo ago
    I get a lot of stuff I care about (some scientific papers overviews, blender/davinci editing tips and tricks, bits of high-quality podcasts) on tiktok, even if I just go for 5 minutes to entertain myself with some audio-visual crap. Mention of its algorithm being responsive matches my observations here.
veqq 10mo ago
There is no meaningful way to use it.
sundarurfriend 10mo ago
We don't have TikTok here (India), but I find YouTube shorts pretty useful. My feed is a mix of Action Labs shorts, Omar Agamy news, ZTT PC stuff, psychology, videos about animals (pet, domestic, wild), etc. I don't know what your standard for meaningful is, but the shorts are at least as useful as long form videos to me, if not more. An important bit of context is that I prefer to get detailed information through text, research, sometimes podcasts, but rarely ever videos. The shorts serve as one low effort way (among others) for me to surface new potentially interesting things, to follow up on to the degree I find useful or interesting.
amatecha 10mo ago
My general view on TikTok is: why would I even remotely want to use something that's specifically designed to exploit me and manipulate me? The tiny shred of value I might experience (in the form of an occasional interesting video) is a side-effect of the service, and if they could get their value out of me and give me literally nothing at all, they would. This same perspective applies to all the centralized "social media" services out there today. None of them exist to make society better or improve the lives of anyone in any meaningful way (outside of enriching the executives and investors running them).
- JKCalhoun 10mo ago
  Yeah, in fact I'm trying to wend myself away from the internet generally. (Sure don't need more of that shit.)
- theshrike79 10mo ago
  To be frank, the TikTok algorithm is the best of all the algorithmic doomscroll machines you can use. Instagram is trash, Youtube Shorts is complete AI puke trash. TikTok actually seems to "know" what I like seeing and clearly learns faster than the others. A quick test just now: - Video about Amiga 500 in the 90s in Finland - A running gag about people having a Favourite Spoon - A recipe for Bao Buns - A skit about Japanese Shisa Kanko pointing and calling method - Book reviews of someone's favourite books of 2025 - Someone tried to do floor work and found a massive shaft leading down under their house Zero ads. All were from "real" people, not content farm accounts. Instagram reels: - A "family account" skit, yech - Ad - A verified account reposting other's videos - Another one of those - Ad - A meme account - A meme account - Ad Not even touching Youtube Shorts, they're even worse.
  - amatecha 9mo ago
    That's cool, but yeah I won't use it regardless (just like I won't use any of the services you mentioned). It's all for-profit centralized extractive/exploitative stuff.
glenngillen 10mo ago
I hear a lot of people be incredibly critical of TikTok, while being active consumers of Facebook/Instagram/X/etc. I've found the content on TikTok to be much better curated to what I actually like, with just enough (i.e., very little!) other content sprinkled in occasionally. I asked someone a similar question to you a year ago and they told me something like "just spend 15 minutes with it. Aggressively swipe past things you aren't enjoying, like the the things you like. Search for something you are interested in too and like anything you like there". My feed is currently entirely basketball coaching tips for kids, cooking & recipes, stand up comedy, basic DIY, fitness/running tips, local restaurant recommendations, and sports highlights.
einpoklum 10mo ago
Closed-source, very-limited-API platforms like Tik Tok do not actually let you "play with the thing". What I imagine you would be interested in is a client which, say, gets the text version of a large number of short videos, filters those texts based on criteria you have defined and meta-data from TikTok (time, number of views, some proxies for a 'quality' measure) and serves you up with the results in a textual form, or perhaps a page with titles/summaries and links to the text and the video. I'm not sure that's worth it but I'm willing to be this is not possible to achieve.

oldsj 10mo ago

[flagged]

harvey9 10mo ago
This site is showing me two speeches and some AI 'analysis'. The analysis is very shallow.

gamesbrainiac 10mo ago

Amusing ourselves to death was such an eye opener for me when I was 19. After that I never took the news seriously.

DavidPiper 10mo ago

I'll always upvote a recommendation for Amusing Ourselves to Death. I haven't yet gone back to Understanding Media directly yet. I haven't watched the news in 5 years. I started watching it again since Bondi (I live nearby), and while I'm surprised at the variation in reporting styles (political bias?) between Australian channels, my overwhelming observation has been just how little key information is actually conveyed. I've found it very helpful to watch the live briefings, Q&As, etc with politicians, but the news cycle here is so short (hourly) that a few minutes later you get to hear a "recap" by the news reporter that glosses over most of the important and interesting points (at best) or actively removes key nuance and outright changes the message delivered by the original person (at worst). I feel there has to be something between "I heard about a thing 7th-hand" and "I actively watch political discourse / read scientific papers", but I'm no longer sure The News, as we currently know it, is it. Presumably this was what "journalism" was originally supposed to be.

john01dav 10mo ago
> I feel there has to be something between "I heard about a thing 7th-hand" and "I actively watch political discourse / read scientific papers", but I'm no longer sure The News, as we currently know it, is it. I have found that some Youtube channels and videos (non-comprehensive examples below (I have hundreds of subscribed channels), mostly not politics, but these things inform politics since politics is making decisions about other things) can fill this gap nicely. This is not a perfect choice, since journalism integrity and standards do not apply, but I find that this can be mitigated by watching a wide variety (for example, in the field of economics, I regularly watch creators who espouse everything from very free-market capitalism all the way to full on communism). There are likely other forms of new media that operate at this level of depth, but I haven't found htem. https://www.youtube.com/@TechnologyConnections https://www.youtube.com/@TechnologyConnections https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWUaS5a50DI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWUaS5a50DI https://www.youtube.com/@HowMoneyWorks https://www.youtube.com/@HowMoneyWorks https://www.youtube.com/@DiamondNestEgg https://www.youtube.com/@DiamondNestEgg https://www.youtube.com/@TLDRnews https://www.youtube.com/@TLDRnews (and associated channels) https://www.youtube.com/@BennJordan https://www.youtube.com/@BennJordan (recent good example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vU1-uiUlHTo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vU1-uiUlHTo)

BrenBarn 10mo ago

Even when I was younger, I was baffled by how people could get their news just from TV, because the amount of information in a TV news report was so tiny compared to what you'd get in a newspaper. When I hear that people view TikTok as their main news source, it's like telling me people wear watermelons as socks. It's so nuts its hard for me to even bring the concept into my brain.

carlosjobim 10mo ago
The TV will have maybe 5 stories, each told in one way only. The Internet (including TikTok) will have nearly unlimited stories, told in unlimited ways. I remember very well when just a few powerful people were allowed to decide what the public would be allowed to know and not know. They could suppress huge stories and leave the public in the dark. For example Chernobyl. They still try that today in print media and television, but have become a pathetic laughing stock now that information is free. Somebody getting news from TikTok will probably be better informed than somebody relying only on print or TV.
- embedding-shape 10mo ago
  > Somebody getting news from TikTok will probably be better informed than somebody relying only on print or TV. Possible, but also quite unlikely. From the people who post "news" on TikTok, I wonder how many spent at least 30-60 minutes on verifying what they're about to post? There is an endless sea of "influencers" who want to be first with posting something, that "validate what you're about to report" doesn't even enter the arena before they've posted their snippet. And if it's retracted, count on the video just silently disappearing. Contrast that with TV and print that at least have some sort of validation, although imperfect, with editors and what not, that review things before they're published. Now of course, US media is a really shit example of proper journalism, as they've all fallen into basically doing "content creation", but if you look at other newspapers and news channels around the world, you'll see that proper journalism is still done, and the people pushing videos on TikTok usually do "content creation" very differently from TV and paper, with very different understanding of what they're actually contributing to.
- 10mo ago

nvarsj 10mo ago

> For today's youth, Tik Tok is "the air we breath" - the de-facto standard against which the future will be judged. It's horrifying to imagine what will be worse. So your argument is centrally controlled and edited distribution of news information is superior? I was born in 82, and news has been largely rubbish in almost all forms. Heavily biased by the editors/owners, things missing, weird focuses. The 1940s was filled with propaganda and newspapers were owned by a few moguls or by fascist governments. At least with the uncensored internet it's possible to educate yourself. There is plenty of amazing journalism if you look around. Including on Tik Tok!

christophilus 10mo ago
Yep. I remember my dad quoting some major news anchor as saying, “My job isn’t to report the news; it’s to shape perception.” Or something like that. I started watching the news with that as my lens, and it seems to be an axiom of the entire industry. I never have managed to find a reliable way to filter the signal from the noise, other than watching / reading the direct sources (CSPAN or whatnot). No one has time for that.
analyst74 10mo ago
News has never been about reporting absolute truth, there is just too much influence/power/money to be gained for manipulating public perception. The fact that people believe in journalistic integrity shows how successful they are at brainwashing the public.

BrtByte 10mo ago

Every generation experiences the current downgrade as catastrophic, only to later discover it was already a compromise layered on top of an earlier one

embedding-shape 10mo ago
So if we try to walk up all the ladders of abstractions and get to the core where we cannot go yet another layer above, what we end up? Word of mouth basically?
hallole 10mo ago
I think, at a minimum, a return to print or radio news is called for. They necessitate attentive consumption of information in a way that video just doesn't. I feel like they leave mental space open for critical thought. TikTok is the total opposite.
- ben_w 10mo ago
  I don't know how bad TikTok is because shorts just don't grab hold of me hard enough to even look at the app, at most I see someone else sharing a short of something silly on a meme channel. But… and I appreciate you did say "at a minimum"… Radio is absolutely something you can have on in the background, vibrating your eardrums without engaging your attention. Intentionality may be impossible in TikTok for all I know, but it isn't enough to just do radio, and I think also not print.

Razengan 10mo ago

Why do people rag on TikTok? What the hell did you grow up on and did your parents and older folks from the previous generation not look down on that with a sigh or disgust?? Rock music? Rap? Video games?? In East Asia I see TikTok as pretty healthy, encouraging kids and even older people to be more active in public spaces, doing harmless dances or imitating other trends. It's actually pretty refreshing. Why you hatin? Or is the West just salty that Facebook/YouTube/Instagram etc fell off as sterile in comparison?

krapp 10mo ago
I can actually remember when the consensus on HN was that TikTok was a novel, fresh experience that reminded them of the "old web" and its spark of creativity. Now the consensus seems to be that it's a Chinese mind-control tool and it represents everything the misanthropes here hate about modern culture, the web and the generations that participate in it. It seems to be exactly the same generational impulse as our parents railing against the "boob tube" and "devil music" or (to quote RMS) "(c)rap music." Although they weren't entirely wrong they weren't nearly as correct as they insisted they were. I suspect the same is true about the current moral panic around social media, and TikTok in general. Yes there are legitimate concerns, but it isn't the ontological evil people make it out to be either. It isn't actually controlling people's minds. It isn't actually more addictive than heroin. And to answer NiloCK without another comment, what's worse will be "TikTok but everything is AI generated by the platform itself." Say what you will about TikTok, at least a lot of it is still human expression.
- JKCalhoun 10mo ago
  > Now the consensus seems to be that it's a Chinese mind-control tool and it represents everything the misanthropes here hate about modern culture, the web and the generations that participate in it. If you drop the word "Chinese" and "misanthrope" I'm in board with your description.
  - Razengan 10mo ago
    > If you drop the word "Chinese" (a mind-control tool) So no worse than FB etc. then, even Reddit and HN where certain views are promoted and others buried.

softwaredoug 10mo ago

There is a flip side to this. Yes it was stabilizing to have “boring” news where every provider largely had the same stories. But there was a narrower Overton window of issues to be discussed. A single thread of attention at any one time. There are advantages to the disjointed, small, grassroots, often histrionic, news of today. We get a lot more perspectives in our news. We get so many it’s overwhelming (and we sadly need to jump into our corners to feel safe). Anyone can start a Substack now and the market can decide if they’re a journalist. In my town there are several more trusted and prominent than the local broadcast news. Some specialize in a topic like housing. Some focus on govt going’s on. And of course there are local nutjobs (or I think they are, others disagree? It’s messy and not nearly summarized, but in some ways it’s better and more detailed than bland evening news.

Tagbert 10mo ago
Current news media is even more narrowly focused on the three hot news stories of the day with 24-hour repetitive commentary all funneled into the narrative of the day.
- softwaredoug 10mo ago
  Yes though cable news is in a gradual decline https://www.adweek.com/tvnewser/here-are-the-cable-news-ratings-for-october-2025 https://www.adweek.com/tvnewser/here-are-the-cable-news-rati... The real action in news media is in flagship newspapers (WSJ, NY Times), podcasts, substacks..