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Ask HN: How to block all political content from showing up online?

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Re: Ask HN: How to block all political content from showing up online?

#31

Post by gitgud »

You could naively block certain domains, authors and keywords. However it's incredibly difficult to determine if a piece of media has political motivation without interpreting the entire text.

Politics also overlaps with morality, philosophy, society, ethics... so having a stance or discussing any issue could be viewed as politically motivated content.

Persuasive writing is especially political. As the author defines their stance on a topic, they will inevitably leak their political beliefs in their expression...

Re: Ask HN: How to block all political content from showing up online?

#33

Post by kradeelav »

Essentially impossible to do especially if you're researching things. However, a list that's helped for me re: basic browsing, and reducing the amount of politics to non-incendiary low amount levels:

- Delete accounts with twitter/tumblr/insta/social media. Twitter especially is a cesspool of people who want to be miserable and/or mad.

- Opt for hand-built sites, tightly curated RSS feeds from non-political blogs, or discord servers that have a strong resistance to those topics. It'll take some searching. I tend to keep my interests around pretty and/or sleazy art.

- Using HN as the "daily newspaper" - if there's no article in the top three slots that have to do with real world events, it's a slow news day and nothing big/bad happened.

Re: Ask HN: How to block all political content from showing up online?

#34

Post by softwaredoug »

There’s no acceptable definition of “politics” when even basic, science informed medical advice can be political.

Instead I think it’s more productive to change your news diet away from histrionic, click bait to more reasonable sources that offer balanced perspectives. Then you can engage your curiosity about a topic with different perspectives rather than your reptilian, tribal “us vs them” brain that exemplifies most media.

Re: Ask HN: How to block all political content from showing up online?

#36

Post by tonymet »

softwaredoug wrote: post #34

There’s no acceptable definition of “politics” when even basic, science informed medical advice can be political. Instead I think it’s more productive to change your news diet away from histrionic, click bait to more reasonable sources that offer balanced perspectives. Then you can engage your curiosity about a topic with different perspectives rather than your reptilian, tribal “us vs them” brain that exemplifies mo…

what would be some examples. all the mainstream media outlets are heavily biased. on tv cnn, msnbc, major networks. in print washpo, nyt all very biased. I'm having a hard time thinking of a moderate publication or channel

Re: Ask HN: How to block all political content from showing up online?

#38

Post by muzani »

Semiapies wrote: post #23
postsantum wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>without blocking 50% of the internet Your terms are acceptable

Now enjoy spending a vast amount of effort finding which 50% of the billions of web pages have political content.

Is it that hard? News and social media have most of it, and non political topics will lean political. Stuff like TV Tropes, HN, and Wikipedia may contain some, but it leans away.

Re: Ask HN: How to block all political content from showing up online?

#39

Post by ElevenLathe »

The internet is a communication medium. It exists to deliver information between people. Since all communication is political, this by definition cannot be done.

Fortunately or unfortunately, you'll have to learn to get along with the other humans on the planet. This is called politics.

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