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Ask HN: Have you stopped reading most news?

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Re: Ask HN: Have you stopped reading most news?

#211

Post by eastbound »

fshbbdssbbgdd wrote: post #37
eastbound wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve booked a psychologist appointment for my TikTok addiction. I spend 1 to 4hrs a day on it, and about half that on various other news like HN. I’m in a double sandwich: Since Covid, I have utter disdain for real-life people, who would miss no opportunity to destroy our lives, such as borrowing a trillion and endebt us for generations just to fuel a stay-at-home policy that destroys social links and physical health…

> I have utter disdain for real-life people, who would miss no opportunity to destroy our lives, such as borrowing a trillion and endebt us for generations just to fuel a stay-at-home policy that destroys social links and physical health, and more generally play the class warfare game (I live in France) A practice that’s been good for my psychological health is to imagine how a good person would come to hold the idea…

That’s a lot of text, so, first, thank you.

> 3. They may understand the economic cost of the lockdown, and they know it will make life more difficult in the future, but they believe the sacrifice is worth it (kind of like how the government went into debt in WWII).

> I’m not saying these people are right about the facts - I’m just saying their motivations are not evil.

Well, you’ve summarized the possible explanations clearly. It’s fairly probable they don’t mind sacrificing people for their fight against Covid. Concluding they are not evil is quite a bold stretch.

Moreover, it’s not them, but it’s the media. But they choose to believe it, however astonishing it may sound, and they either don’t see the BS or they choose to ignore it.

But that’s the story of living in a society, at one point you have to admit that you are defeated and some crazy people have control, and that they are literally watching what escapes of happiness you have and closing them one by one, because you’re white, male, have a company, may want to date, may want to travel, all of this is under threat, they’ll demonize all those attributes while valuing people who believe in astrology or in carpe diem.

They’re not acting random. They’re after me, as an archetype. There is no path to happiness.

Re: Ask HN: Have you stopped reading most news?

#212

Post by Balgair »

Try foreign news outlets.

Most big newspapers have English language versions of their websites [0]. Sure, yeah, they are biased too. But their biases are somehow easier to spot to me. And they tend to have biases that I don't really care about. Like, AUS newspapers are really biased towards AFL or NRL coverage, but I don't really care about either.

Also, newspapers that are pure propaganda are good to read too. Like ones out of China or Iran. They are very clearly designed to try to steer you in a direction. So, it's kinda fun to read them and see what they are fearing this week or whatever. It's like a inoculation, I think.

Then you go back and read you own country's news and can somehow see the biases better, or at least tell yourself that you can.

If you can read another language, it's also a great way to keep up with that language. I can read Spanish, so also choosing to read the news in Spanish is a great tactic too. Seeing the difference in coverage and especially in advertisements is eye opening.

Like, watch Telemundo, they really think something different between the Anglo demos and the Spanish demos, the ads are really something.

[0] Except for the French ones, for some reason. Their English language sites tend to be pretty terrible.

Re: Ask HN: Have you stopped reading most news?

#213

Post by koonsolo »

raxxorraxor wrote: post #205
koonsolo wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to ask this question: How is the government controlling the media? In Russia's case, it's pretty clear. They have laws to prohibit free press, jail time for claiming things opposite to the Kremlin. In some other cases, it's more subtle. In Hungary, Orban's influence on the media is very high, and not healthy for a democracy. But if you claim that the most objective news sources in the west still show straigh…

How is the government controlling the media? Mainly through access. If you don't report favorably, your government sources might withdraw. Sources that provide you with exclusive information that you can provide first. There are of course unimaginable other venues to enforce compliance to a certain framing. There is also documentation how this was achieved in the past. I saw how the press quickly turned people in fav…

Let's take the US as example: you claim that news sources will not discredit the president or government?

Re: Ask HN: Have you stopped reading most news?

#215

Post by socialismisok »

kortilla wrote: post #137
socialismisok wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no such thing as a neutral news source. The act of editing a publication necessarily requires you to choose which stories you publish and whose viewpoints you leave out. Furthermore, most folks don't really want a neutral news outlet - do I want to see equal time given to white supremacists and Black civil rights leaders? No, I'm just not interested in any "neutral" discussion of human rights. I don't want t…

Ah yes, the false equivalence of “I just want a news source that actually critically evaluates what leftist politicians in power say” with “I wish they would bring Hitler back”. > There is no such thing as a neutral news source. No there isn’t, but there are news sources that try to be critical of the points they normally support and don’t let people get away with bullshit for “the greater good”. NPR (KQED in particu…

There are very few leftist politicians in power, and nearly zero in the US. Kshama Sawant, for sure. And who else? Maaaaaybe AOC and the "progressive caucus"?

Re: Ask HN: Have you stopped reading most news?

#216

Post by ohCh6zos »

groceryheist wrote: post #126
steve_adams_86 wrote: post #18

I’m going darker by the day. I don’t seek out news, and when I do read it, I tend to feel disturbed by how little it presents as reporting, and instead, how much it appears to have an agenda. I could do better. I followed the Ukraine-Russia war for a while, and although I wasn’t glued to it, I put too much focus on it. There is literally nothing that happens if I know what’s going on there. Nothing at all. It distrac…

> There is literally nothing that happens if I know what’s going on there. > Nothing at all. It distracts me from my family, friends, work, and myself. > I have no interesting insights or original thoughts about it, and if I did, > absolutely no one would care. So why read it? Do you vote or participate in politics in any way or do events in the news directly affect your life? One reason it's rational to read the new…

Interestingly if you everyone went dark news driven social norms would have to disappear.

Re: Ask HN: Have you stopped reading most news?

#217

Post by socialismisok »

cudgy wrote: post #199
tomjakubowski wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The average American is much more likely to die from Covid than from murder (and, in the recent past, Covid was the far more likely fate), so this doesn't seem crazy on its face.

What is an average American?

The number of deaths divided by the number of Americans. The phrase "average American" is shorthand for "statistically across all Americans".

Re: Ask HN: Have you stopped reading most news?

#218

Post by socialismisok »

skellington wrote: post #123
socialismisok wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drug overdoses are probably a pretty minor impact to safety though, right? And vaccination rates are a pretty standard way to indicate the safety of a community against a virus...

Sure, so I guess you're being willingly misled here because the most important thing is dunking on red states due to your politics. So, if some random article says "Dallas is less safe than NYC," you are forced to believe it even though the article weighted covid vaccine rate at 90% and murder at 10%.

I have no interest in dunking on red states or praising blue ones. I think that divide is both stupid and missing the point. We're way better served by looking at things like class divide, imo.

Also, the methodology gave murders per Capita double weight and vaccine percentages double weight. Both are numbers bound between 0 and 1, and both have a significant impact on population safety.

So no, I'd much rather talk about why someone would make those weightings and what the correct ratings should be using a statistical analysis mixed with some judgements of how safe I feel in the face of those statistics.

Re: Ask HN: Have you stopped reading most news?

#219

Post by jwarden »

In my experience, many people who consume a lot of news without taking the time to study any issues in-depth can be as a consequence less well-informed about the world than people that don’t watch the news at all.

The reason is that the news is a necessarily biased selection of facts. And a biased set of facts, even if accurate, can cause people to believe things about the world that are not true.

The facts tend to be anecdotal evidence about things that invoke fear and outrage. Many people consequently have an extremely disproportionate, warped sense of what sorts of problems and dangers face themselves and society. This is of course a big problem.

It is nobody’s job to provide you with a comprehensive, balanced set of important facts about the world that would make you an informed citizen. So if you passively consume news and do not actively seek information, you will be ill-informed.

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