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Show HN: Compare news from the political left and right

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Re: Show HN: Compare news from the political left and right

#71

Post by kingsuper20 »

makomk wrote: post #35
eganist wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have a couple of observations: firstly, it's interesting that the Guardian is considered to be dead-centre, while most in the UK would say that it's quite on the left. I found that surprising. Who? Both Ad Fontes and AllSides say that The Guardian merely skews to the left, and Ad Fontes' analysis concludes that it's one of the "most reliable". (Ad Fontes' analysis here: https://www.adfontesmedia.com/the-guardian-…

I think that mostly shows the limits of their analysis. The Guardian is basically the left-wing paper in the UK; I don't think there's anything to the left of them outside of fairly fringe, niche, and very fragmented publications. Internal disputes within the left play out within their comment section, whilst the news section often seems to attacking the right wing as its main goal.

I see that CNN is in the middle-of-the-road section.

Search 'Trump' (naturally, it's currently the best test case) and you get:

"Former President Donald Trump repeated familiar lies about the 2020 election and insulted Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell Saturday when speaking to Republican National Committee donors gathered for the first time since Trump’s defeat, a person in the room told CNN."

'familiar lies' 'insulted' 'a person in the room told'

The Weekly World News has taken over the world.

Re: Show HN: Compare news from the political left and right

#73

Post by pdonis »

dguo wrote: post #46
d--b wrote: post #38

I hoped that this would put side by side articles about the same subjects but with different spins. I find myself comparing breitbart/foxnews/nytimes/guardian quite often.

The Flip Side does this: https://www.theflipside.io/

> The Flip Side does this

Only if you give them your email address, apparently. What's that about?

Re: Show HN: Compare news from the political left and right

#74

Post by pdonis »

gremlinsinc wrote: post #43
valparaiso wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When leftist media platforms like Facebook ban news about BLM marxist founder buying mansions in white area is this liberal or authoritarian/fascist approach?

It'd be libertarian, because libertarians believe that corporations should have the right to do basically whatever they want that doesn't physically infringe on another's own freedoms to do whatever they want. Facebook banning content on "their yard" does not hurt anyone because it's their property. Therefore on a spectrum this would be Right - Libertarian. Conservative on the political spectrum states: Right-wing po…

> libertarians believe that corporations should have the right to do basically whatever they want that doesn't physically infringe on another's own freedoms to do whatever they want

No, libertarians believe that actual people should have that right (subject to the non-aggression principle, which is actually more than just "doesn't physically infringe on another's freedoms"). Corporations are not actual people.

To a libertarian, corporations are tools that individual people can use if they want to work together to accomplish some common purpose. But most "corporations" in today's society are no such thing; certainly Facebook is not. Most stockholders in corporations today have no actual interest in what the corporation does or what common purpose it is serving; they view their stock as just a money-making asset. (Indeed, most "stockholders" in individual corporations today are mutual funds, not individual investors.) None of this is libertarian; it is due to government manipulation of the financial system and government regulation of corporations and investments. In a truly libertarian world something like Facebook could not even exist.

Re: Show HN: Compare news from the political left and right

#75

Post by loonster »

imiric wrote: post #45
giantg2 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you're using outlet/organization level bias ratings to assign bias ratings to individual articles on a specific topic? Can't it vary by topic, author, or even what facts are represented (used, excluded, or wrong)? For example, when I looked at the articles in the middle of the slider, it seemed that they were more of a mix of left and right leaning articles, not necessarily middle ground articles (and seemed to be…

Exactly. The biases are per news source and actually constant: https://github.com/Hadjimina/perspectiveNews/blob/0c4c6a932a... I'm sure they are eventually updated, but making a general judgment per news source to show individual articles means it will occasionally be wrong and misleading for the reader. The name alone, "their news", suggests an us vs. them mentality that we could use less of these days. For once I t…

Could probably do this with just searching for adjectives. Instead of a right/left news display it would be a positive/negative display.

Re: Show HN: Compare news from the political left and right

#76

Post by riskable »

grawprog wrote: post #65
wffurr wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading “their” news makes me scared and angry that people actually read this crap on purpose and presumably agree with much of it. How is that supposed to help pop filter bubbles?

Because if you actually stop to look at 'their' side and compare the news stories to 'your' side, you'll find both sides are full of exactly the same kind of loaded subjective language, usually written in the same adversarial tone and distort truth in some way to fit an agenda. In some cases you can literally take a story from one side, swap all the adjectives so they have the opposite meaning and congrats, you've no…

> In some cases you can literally take a story from one side, swap all the adjectives so they have the opposite meaning and congrats, you've now written a story for the other side.

This is not how media bias works. What you're referring to is how propaganda works (well, one type anyway: Where you report the opposite of the truth in order to confuse people into thinking, "I don't know who to believe anymore").

> https://youtu.be/xiYZ__Ww02c

You know this video is satire, right? It's not real yet I'm getting a hint here that you might have taken it at face value.

Re: Show HN: Compare news from the political left and right

#77

Post by pdonis »

kingsuper20 wrote: post #62
jokethrowaway wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an interesting interpretation and I like it, even if I disagree! There is nothing libertarian about censoring someone. Sure, you have the right to do that, given they're on your private property (on Facebook) but that screams authoritarianism: it's like Facebook is his own little country ruling on his citizens and limiting their freedom. Now, the act of advocating for Facebook to be able to do what it is curre…

It's always the edge conditions that are the interesting ones. How does an anarcho-capitalist deal with issues like village commons, natural monopolies, winner-take-all business models, national borders, etc?

> How does an anarcho-capitalist deal with issues like village commons, natural monopolies, winner-take-all business models, national borders, etc?

The general answer is, by mutual agreement among the affected persons, and by refusing to interact at all with people who cannot be trusted to abide by mutual agreements.

For a more detailed treatment, see, for example, David Friedman's The Machinery of Freedom.

Of course there is no simple, short path from where we are now to any feasible anarcho-capitalist society; the idea that we need governments to solve problems is becoming more and more firmly entrenched, even in the face of the terrible track record of governments at actually solving problems.

Re: Show HN: Compare news from the political left and right

#78

Post by riskable »

vehemenz wrote: post #39

I appreciate the idea, but there are various conceptual problems when presenting political bias this way. 1. "Left" and "right" on their own are too vague to be useful. 2. There is a difference between party affiliation/apologism and political views. 3. "Left" and "right" news sources, as conventionally understood, would show a wildly asymmetrical data plot. 4. There are multiple dimensions to political views.

> "Left" and "right" news sources, as conventionally understood, would show a wildly asymmetrical data plot.

Isn't that what's literally represented on the site though? The dots in the slider are not symmetrical. They're "wildly asymmetrical", as it were.

As soon as I saw the slider with the dots my immediate thought was, "Wow, they don't have an extreme left dot! This could be legit!" Because--despite what common far right media tends to refer to as, "the far left"--there actually doesn't seem to be any "far left" news sources.

I mean, where's the news websites that are constantly suggesting the people seize the means of production and nationalize all industries? Where's the TV news channel with endless talking heads referring to all private businesses as tyrannical for not spreading all profits across all employees?

It would be interesting to have such a news site for comparison purposes because I think it would give every day folks a taste of what "far left" actually is (i.e. not CNN which is center-right yet ask any Fox News watcher what constitutes "far left" and they'll say CNN, New York Times, etc).

Re: Show HN: Compare news from the political left and right

#79

Post by watwut »

grawprog wrote: post #65
wffurr wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading “their” news makes me scared and angry that people actually read this crap on purpose and presumably agree with much of it. How is that supposed to help pop filter bubbles?

Because if you actually stop to look at 'their' side and compare the news stories to 'your' side, you'll find both sides are full of exactly the same kind of loaded subjective language, usually written in the same adversarial tone and distort truth in some way to fit an agenda. In some cases you can literally take a story from one side, swap all the adjectives so they have the opposite meaning and congrats, you've no…

That is not actually true. Not in terms of how the person doing reading will perceive it. And not in terms of how world works.

Real world is not perfectly symmetrical. It is not composed of two sides in the first place. In the second, even if you roughly split it, it rare ends up as "both are the same". That ideology of perfect center is just emotionally convenient model.

Re: Show HN: Compare news from the political left and right

#80

Post by wffurr »

loonster wrote: post #70
gremlinsinc wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I lean left but outside the Dem party I hangout /r/politics and lurk in /r/conservative and also checkout many socialist anarcho{communist|syndicalist|capitalist} and libertarian subs... I know what I feel is "right" and I feel confident I can tell B.S. I mean when the obvious goal is ...basically to make the op/commenter feel better about their "view" of the world then to me it's obviously something to take w/ a ver…

Reddit did a huge purge of conservatives in the past couple years (2020 especially). You will have to go somewhere else if you truly want a conservative viewpoint.

ITYM they banned people for posting content encouraging violence and harassment, violating the terms of service.

It just so happened that some large conservative subs were engaging in that behavior.

Curious, isn't it?

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