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Things you notice when you quit the news (2016)

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Re: Things you notice when you quit the news (2016)

#471

Post by kenjackson »

kenjackson wrote: post #303
macksd wrote: post #4

I fully agree with this. Scanning Google News or a couple of the more professional international news services like BBC / Al Jazeera / Reuters I still feel pretty well informed (and confident that there's usually nothing of immediate consequence to me) but it doesn't grow into "expert analysis" or impact my feelings much. Here's another thing I noticed: how manipulated / manipulative it is. And not just news and I do…

The manipulation part is what I find fascinating. And not just the way people use the term now about "fake news". But more about how the news cycle needs to keep you constantly engaged. If you follow the news, especially political news, it seems like the sky is falling constantly. I was always up in arms about something. As the author notes, when I do pay attention to the news I feel better. Again, political news in…

I meant to say, "when I DON'T pay attention to the news I feel better"

Re: Things you notice when you quit the news (2016)

#472

Post by einpoklum »

ROTMetro wrote: post #168

As someone who just stepped back into pop culture after being in prison for years (so might as well been on the moon) my first shock was just how horrible it all is now. There is no news worth watching. Cable news is just a pile of filth excremented by a Labrador Retriever that solely eats baby diapers. I thought I will watch Bloomberg since if real money is involved it can't be too manipulative. Nope, wrong. The int…

Regardless of news media, I really want to wish you the best of, well, success more than luck. I do some prisoner-related activism (although it's for political prisoners), and that's enough to relate at least somewhat to the "I felt like I walked out into an alien civilization" sense that many people have.

... and don't spend too much time on HN :-P

Re: Things you notice when you quit the news (2016)

#473

Post by s1artibartfast »

ppeetteerr wrote: post #257
parkingrift wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strong disagree with the idea that watching or reading mainstream news is informative. I don't think it's unfair at all to label mainstream news (US) as propaganda. Have you ever compared the home pages of major mainstream media companies? It's as if they are reporting on a completely different country. It begs the question of whether it is better to be uninformed or misinformed. Consuming mainstream media in the US…

How would you have found out about the Texas power outages last year or the rising Opioid epidemic if it were not for news (unless you lived in Texas or knew someone addicted to Oxy)? Or any other event from your city all the way to your federal government? You can dismiss all news as being misinformation, but even the shadiest outlets report some semblance of facts. It's the cause of the news that's often up for deb…

>How would you have found out about the Texas power outages last year

I think this is a great example. Why should anyone outside of Texas even care about the power outages and waste time "informing themselves" about it.

Re: Things you notice when you quit the news (2016)

#474

Post by xanaxagoras »

webkike wrote: post #352
rurp wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> feel free to carry on and go book your vacation to the Ukraine, drive a Volkswagen, work for facebook... These could all be researched at the time of purchase though. There's nothing in the daily news about VW or Ukraine that can't be learned more efficiently by doing some research just before purchasing a vehicle or vacation. There's nothing wrong with keeping tabs on the latest headlines, I personally do so and a…

The post lists several other things along with those examples that I think DO make it essential: > use too much water during a drought season, have your garden furniture blow through your windows when that storm rolls in, have a BBQ during a high-risk fire season If you’re going to check if there’s a drought every time you use water - congratulations, you’re reading the news!

dat username tho

Re: Things you notice when you quit the news (2016)

#475

Post by dijonman2 »

yojo wrote: post #442
qiskit wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm a firm believer in quality over quantity when it comes to news When it comes to news, I'm of the opinion that one should strive for diversity of opinion rather than quality. As you noted, all media has a bias so you should see what everyone's biases are. You will never get truth from any single media outfit so cast a wide net. > What worked well for me was getting a print subscription to the Economist. Why woul…

Print ads are a lot less obtrusive for me compared to digital ads. It's literally just a piece of paper that I don't have to look at. They don't have inline ads, or sponsored content, or autoplaying videos, or any of the conventional web shenanigans that try to hijack your attention. They certainly can't track me. I can't speak to the digital side of the economist, as I do not use it, but the print ads are mostly for…

Ads without javascript are great, but they barely pay anything as it’s apparently harder to identify fraud.

Everything is moving, animated, etc. Blink was deprecated for a reason, it’s annoying. So is auto play, stickies, overlays, copy/paste interference, etc. The dark patterns make it miserable.

Re: Things you notice when you quit the news (2016)

#476

Post by dijonman2 »

qiskit wrote: post #412
robertlagrant wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why would you pay for something that has ads? It would be like paying facebook for a facebook account. Or paying to go to live sports when everything has ads on it.

It's why I stopped watching football, baseball, basketball, etc. Used to be a huge sports addict. Such an incredible waste of time looking back. Now, I only watch ad free highlights, if that. But peak level of lunacy are the ad-ridden movie trailers on youtube. I can't believe people are actually watching ads in order to watch an ad...

uBlock origin, haven’t seen an ad in years. The web is unusable without it.

Re: Things you notice when you quit the news (2016)

#477

Post by jollybean »

I get it, and totally agree on 'mental health' - but the message is misplaced.

Ignorance is bliss, and 'eternal vigilance' is the thing necessary in order to keep our system going.

If we could all be 'reasonably informed' - so many problems would be avoided.

'Good' countries fail from within, and Tyrants come to power on a wave of populism which is ultimately based on misinformation.

We really do need to pay attention, but the issue becomes much more difficult in an era wherein main stream outlets have jacked up their bias, where Twitter advocates saucy, false and vindictive statements, where the Internet has enabled every Yahoo (pun intended) to have a soapbox and provided very little facility to wade through the morass to find reasonable voices. Often the reasonable voices aren't actually reasonable. A lot of intellectual voices over-state the issues. It's really, really, hard.

Instead of 'disassociating' entirely from the news, one could chose to 'disassociate from any political ideal' and just read from a variety of sources, and less often. Sometimes the high brow places (i.e. FP or FT) have less audacious triggering. Some high quality outlets that have known biases are not a good place to spend a lot of time. Check the headlines from state propaganda. Read the English news from other countries occasionally - this is quite refreshing because the foreign perspective tends to entirely deconstruct the local rubbish back and forth by not giving it much credence.

Get out of a political headset and don't over consume, but pay attention. It's kind of like voting, it matters collectively.

Re: Things you notice when you quit the news (2016)

#479

Post by sumedh »

macksd wrote: post #4

I fully agree with this. Scanning Google News or a couple of the more professional international news services like BBC / Al Jazeera / Reuters I still feel pretty well informed (and confident that there's usually nothing of immediate consequence to me) but it doesn't grow into "expert analysis" or impact my feelings much. Here's another thing I noticed: how manipulated / manipulative it is. And not just news and I do…

> (and confident that there's usually nothing of immediate consequence to me)

Those sites are not going to cover your local news which will have an impact on your life.

Re: Things you notice when you quit the news (2016)

#480

Post by ROTMetro »

cpach wrote: post #203
ROTMetro wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it definitely is biased. It sadly very much "informs" you towards having the opinion it wants to promote which is what I think we are discussing getting away from.

If I may ask, what other publications do you recommend that you deem more objective? Do they also cover large swathes of the whole world, like The Economist does?

I wish I knew some I would probably be less 'OMG everything has gotten horrible' overreacting.
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