Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Teens Debate Big Issues on Instagram Flop Accounts

theatlantic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 62 posts

Re: Teens Debate Big Issues on Instagram Flop Accounts

#11

Post by glitcher »

Rjevski wrote: post #3

Sad to see that for the new generation, "news" is equivalent to shitty Instagram pictures. It's quite funny that they consider this as more trustworthy than conventional "news". Not saying conventional news is always right, but I'd still trust it more than pseudonymous accounts on a social network. > “Flop accounts have a lot of people fact-checking each other instead of just depending on one source giving us informa…

> ...have a lot of people fact-checking each other instead of just depending on one source giving us information

Reminds me of one of the main reasons I enjoy discussions on HN so much.

> ...instead of just depending on one source giving us information... The fact that we’re all posting about these things means we all have to do research

Therein lies the rub - how do you vet the "research" of your peers in content that seems to largely not cite references? My guess is that they are likely to be using the same sources of information without realizing or acknowledging it.

Re: Teens Debate Big Issues on Instagram Flop Accounts

#13

Post by agumonkey »

Rjevski wrote: post #3

Sad to see that for the new generation, "news" is equivalent to shitty Instagram pictures. It's quite funny that they consider this as more trustworthy than conventional "news". Not saying conventional news is always right, but I'd still trust it more than pseudonymous accounts on a social network. > “Flop accounts have a lot of people fact-checking each other instead of just depending on one source giving us informa…

Throwing an hypothesis: since the 50s the drift into youth culture leads to an immature relationship to the world, a distaste with adult lingo because of a lack of habits regarding complexity and abstractions. I think this is a mistake.

Re: Teens Debate Big Issues on Instagram Flop Accounts

#14

Post by toasterlovin »

stefan_ wrote: post #4
sverige wrote: post #2

[flagged]

All the accounts quoted have <20k followers, some much less. Someone was looking for material.

At one point Joe Rogan had 20k subscribers. Now he’s arguably the most influential interviewer in the world.

All important things start small. It can be useful to pay attention to small, interesting phenomena.

Re: Teens Debate Big Issues on Instagram Flop Accounts

#15

Post by woah »

Rjevski wrote: post #7
soared wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where did you see that young people think flop accounts are news? The article is about discussing issues on instagram, there is no mention of news. Kids today grew up with the internet - knowing that big corporations we're slanting views/news from day 1 because they could go compare the same headline at fox, cnn, and nbc. Previous generations couldn't do that so easily. So a complete distrust of news shouldn't be sur…

> All the while, an increasing number of teens are turning to these types of accounts for news, seeing them as more reliable and trustworthy than traditional media. It says it right there in the article. My point is that conventional news can be biased, but they're much harder to bias than this nonsense. Conventional news would pretty much require the entire media company to be on your side, which would require a lot…

You have a very narrow and arbitrary definition of “bias” which seems to be crafted specially to make whatever point you’re trying to make.

Re: Teens Debate Big Issues on Instagram Flop Accounts

#17

Post by Rjevski »

woah wrote: post #15
Rjevski wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All the while, an increasing number of teens are turning to these types of accounts for news, seeing them as more reliable and trustworthy than traditional media. It says it right there in the article. My point is that conventional news can be biased, but they're much harder to bias than this nonsense. Conventional news would pretty much require the entire media company to be on your side, which would require a lot…

You have a very narrow and arbitrary definition of “bias” which seems to be crafted specially to make whatever point you’re trying to make.

Could you elaborate? How is my definition of bias incorrect? All I'm saying is that people with power/money can use these to skew media to push their own agenda.

Re: Teens Debate Big Issues on Instagram Flop Accounts

#18

Post by Alex3917 »

Rjevski wrote: post #3

Sad to see that for the new generation, "news" is equivalent to shitty Instagram pictures. It's quite funny that they consider this as more trustworthy than conventional "news". Not saying conventional news is always right, but I'd still trust it more than pseudonymous accounts on a social network. > “Flop accounts have a lot of people fact-checking each other instead of just depending on one source giving us informa…

> It's quite funny that they consider this as more trustworthy than conventional "news"

I mean they probably are. It’s unlikely these kids are running their Instagram channels as loss leaders with the real goal of selling billion dollar military technology.

Re: Teens Debate Big Issues on Instagram Flop Accounts

#19

Post by qubax »

Rjevski wrote: post #3

Sad to see that for the new generation, "news" is equivalent to shitty Instagram pictures. It's quite funny that they consider this as more trustworthy than conventional "news". Not saying conventional news is always right, but I'd still trust it more than pseudonymous accounts on a social network. > “Flop accounts have a lot of people fact-checking each other instead of just depending on one source giving us informa…

> It's quite funny that they consider this as more trustworthy than conventional "news".

Given the state of conventional news, can you blame them? Foxnews is just a republican party news organization. And everything else ( CNN, MSNBC, WaPo, NYTimes, NPR, etc ) are a democratic party news organization.

It is sad that news has become so political and none of it is reliable. It's just one political side lying, exaggerating, clickbaiting and hating the other political side. It's a political/news war and the first casualty of any war is the truth.

Maybe it was always this way and I was just too young and naive to notice.

> Are they sure? I bet it's just one big echo chamber of people copy/pasting each other, just like every trend on social media (memes, etc).

As long as they don't censor, it won't be an echo chamber. Social media only becomes an echo chamber when the company takes sides. Sadly, google, twitter, reddit, facebook, etc are being forced to take sides with disastrous results. It doesn't help that formerly trusted organizations like the SPLC and ADL have turned extremely biased and unreliable.

The worst part is that news companies are at the forefront of pushing for censoring on the internet. Which creates more echo chambers, which creates more divisions. But I suppose that is good for ratings and that's all that matters to news companies. Not truth, not objectivity. Just ratings.

Given how toxic news media has gotten, it's better than teens stay away from it entirely. How many adults go insane watching CNN, MSNBC or Foxnews? Too many. The news industry has only itself to blame for it's predicament. Nobody trust news for a reason.

Re: Teens Debate Big Issues on Instagram Flop Accounts

#20

Post by ouid »

panarky wrote: post #5
stefan_ wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the accounts quoted have <20k followers, some much less. Someone was looking for material.

Small accounts can be more influential than accounts that broadcast to millions of followers. Witness the power of small Whatsapp groups for example. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/07/18/technology/wh...

this webpage design is horrific.
Post reply on HN