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Ask HN: Would you wait a day for less biased, more reliable curated news?

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Ask HN: Would you wait a day for less biased, more reliable curated news?

#1

Post by awgme »

A couple friends and I were thinking of curating news together. Each one of us will tackle on a few topics each day, reading through most of the news of the selected topics, and with a bit of research, select one or more news articles that best describes the event, maybe with a little bit of "the curators context".

The goal is to help each other reach a less biased and more reliable source for news. The challenge is obviously the effect of individual biases, and the time spent curating news may affect the quality as well. One of the biggest trade off is that since we're going through news of the day, the curated news would be delayed, maybe as much as a day.

Instead of just posting them on a facebook group, we're thinking of throwing our curated news as blog posts, so that other people may benefit if they choose to use it.

What does HN think? Would you read curated news for less biased and more reliable information with delayed consumption on the event as a tradeoff? Any idea and feedback is great, as we want to further mature the concept (e.g. setting up some rules and baselines, as well as deciding on how to delegate each topic, etc.) before starting out.

Cheers and have a happy new year!

Re: Ask HN: Would you wait a day for less biased, more reliable curated news?

#2

Post by polygot »

I think your idea is pretty cool

I just had another an idea about something tangentially similar just a few minutes ago. It'd be algorithmically curated news with no human intervention: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13284875 . Do you think this would be somewhat related to what you're talking about?

Re: Ask HN: Would you wait a day for less biased, more reliable curated news?

#3

Post by wmccullough »

I think this is a great idea. Instead of burdening yourselves with the task, why not establish a set of rules and let curation become democratized. I'd argue that the majority of people would follow the rules. Obviously you'll still get the Reddit style trolls who will try to throw it off.

Re: Ask HN: Would you wait a day for less biased, more reliable curated news?

#4

Post by galfarragem »

I wouldn't:

- If it is something really relevant it will appear on HN front page with a very short delay. Then, by reading the comments and looking for different points of view, I can form an opinion as unbiased as it is possible to get.

- In addition, for weekly digested news, I can read the Economist.

Re: Ask HN: Would you wait a day for less biased, more reliable curated news?

#6

Post by morbidhawk »

tldr; I'm pessimistic about this

This is a hard problem I think. Sometimes news that is interesting and popular is also controversial or just click-bait BS, so you have an ethical vs. interesting news dichotomy. Day-old-news will probably not be interesting to people who already read and discussed the topic the day before. Also consider that if only a few people are curating it there will be other discrediting flaws that might not be caught until more readers see it.

Also, keep in mind that if users get sick of the same kind of articles being posted (which could likely happen given biases of the curators) instead of blaming the users for upvoting (like on HN) they will blame the service instead and will likely stop using the service altogether.

Edit: I could see this working with a small group of individuals that are like-minded to the biases/opinions of the curators.

Re: Ask HN: Would you wait a day for less biased, more reliable curated news?

#7

Post by gpsx »

I think we need a single news source in the US that both liberals and conservatives could read. The two sides are living in different worlds, not because one side is reading fake news but because the two sides of the news are given from increasingly different perspectives. Fixing this problem is critical for the well being of our country. I have been waiting for someone to address this.

With that said, I am not sure if the solution you propose fixes that. The small group of curators would just providing a new perspective, probably not one that liberals and conservatives would both like. This is after all what many existing news sources already do. The key is in the group of curators. Maybe a well known group of liberals and conservatives could work on the stories so it fairly addresses the perspectives of both sides?

Re: Ask HN: Would you wait a day for less biased, more reliable curated news?

#9

Post by codeddesign »

Impossible. Your own biases consciously or sub-consciously would ultimately skew the curation. Facebook ran into this issue a little while ago with trending topics. If they did it manually, it was skewed. If they did in algorithmically, it was skewed based on whoever wrote the algorithm. The only possible way that I could see this working is if you had 3 columns: Left-wing, right-wing, and relatively unbiased (all news articles are biased simply because editors and news agencies are biased). Within those three columns, you place news articles in the left-wing or right-wing columns, and allow for voting (left, right, unbiased). However, this would also require you to have a large group from both sides voting in order to function properly. Good luck!
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