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Show HN: Boring Report, a news app that uses AI to desensationalize the news

boringreport.org

251–260 of 348 posts

Re: Show HN: Boring Report, a news app that uses AI to desensationalize the news

#251
I've been reading boringreport for few days now thanks! Here's some constructive feedback:

- The world section is super weird especially where important geopolitics are mixed in with "someone dies in a car crash in the UK".

- The web app is pretty bad for what could be much better off as a static text document. Expanding articles is unnecessary slow. Why do I have to wait 3 seconds to get 1 extra sentence and a link? Why abbreviate 3 sentences into half of a sentence at all? The full article also comes up at the bottom of the screen while locking out the rest of the app - trully weird. Honestly, it's not very usable at the current state.

Re: Show HN: Boring Report, a news app that uses AI to desensationalize the news

#252

I think this is an amazing idea! The only flaw I see with it is that without the sensationalized headlines I read through going "Oh that doesn't matter, that doesn't matter either" etc haha I haven't found an article that sounds interesting in a few scrolls. I mean, it's great because it's accurate. Half of the "news" we're fed is sensationalized so we'll click on it and it's really nothing but it gets us riled up ab…

This is why I am just as skeptical of criticism of the media.

Everyone wants to consume their work, but they need people to pay for it so that they can keep working, but people won’t consume their work unless it’s sensational.

Re: Show HN: Boring Report, a news app that uses AI to desensationalize the news

#253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This, unless you are physically protesting (in a way that’s legitimately disruptive and not symbolic), campaigning, or otherwise actually doing something beyond voting, how angry you are (or more generally how passionately you feel about an issue) doesn’t affect the outcome much if at all. This was a key step towards improving my own mental health by unplugging from news. I do care about things like abortion and crim…

> This, unless you are physically protesting (in a way that’s legitimately disruptive and not symbolic) To be fair, protesting (even the legitimately disruptive kind) doesn't really do anything either. We had people from all sides of the political spectrum protesting everything during the last three years, and the world is pretty much exactly like it was in 2019. Protesting is just "being angry, but outside".

I think it's important to do something practical. Even if you're a full time warrior for justice, screaming all the time will burn you out. You have to do practical stuff. Volunteer to clean up, volunteer to be a mentor to at-risk youth, volunteer to help people look for jobs, volunteer to help build houses, volunteer to teach people English, volunteer to help people sign up for social services, volunteer to make food and distribute food, etc, etc, etc. Pick something practical and do it.

...and it'll also help you advocate for systemic change in multiple ways. It gives you far better insight into the true nature of social problems, so you can advocate more effectively about them. It also signals to people that you actually care about the issue and aren't just yelling about it because someone on the Internet stirred you up. It gives you legitimacy and authority on the topic.

Doing ONLY practical stuff can also leave you drained as you feel overwhelmed by the scale of systemic issues. So having a balance of both sides, both practical change and pushing for systemic change can be very powerful.

And keep in mind that social media is largely an echo chamber. You're not really raising awareness by retweeting stuff on twitter to your like-minded followers. You need to get out there and talk to friends, family, neighbors, coworkers, and local leaders like at city hall, etc. If you've done a lot of practical stuff, you may be able to talk to local journalists and write op-eds with some level of authority on the topic.

Re: Show HN: Boring Report, a news app that uses AI to desensationalize the news

#254
I like this idea, but I feel like the summary sometimes strips away too much context to remain useful. For example the current top story is “Fact Check: Claims Made by Former President Trump” and it includes sections like “Trump's attempts to blame then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for January 6th security failures were found to be false.”

That doesn’t tell me what he was claiming or how it was shown to be false. Whether or not someone will trust that conclusion will just depend on whether they tend to trust CNN, or their pre-existing bias on Trump/Jan 6/Pelosi.

Reading the original article his claim was that Pelosi was in charge of security as speaker of the house, and that is false because that’s the responsibility of the Capitol Police Board. I think that’d be a more useful summary of that section and a human wouldn’t have stripped away the specifics quite so much.

Re: Show HN: Boring Report, a news app that uses AI to desensationalize the news

#255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This just brings reality to the forefront and makes me realize I don't care about the news Maybe the pre-clickbait era version of you would have found more of these articles interesting? So maybe it's not that you don't care about the news, but your "base level" of what's interesting is different due to being used to clickbait.

100% agree, doing this wholesale would probably help my (and likely others) mental states as a whole! Imagine desensationalizing product sites and ads and the like, we might actually be able to bring down that threshold so it can stop ever increasing. The irony here is I feel like what I wrote here is sensationalized lol I do truly think it could be helpful I just think a lot of us are "broken" as far as that's conce…

Sensationalism typically involves the use of exciting or shocking stories or language at the expense of accuracy, in order to provoke public interest or excitement. Your text, while expressing strong feelings about the topic, doesn't exaggerate or misrepresent the facts for dramatic effect. You're discussing your thoughts and feelings about the potential positive impact of desensationalizing advertisements, which is a subjective opinion rather than a sensationalized claim.

Re: Show HN: Boring Report, a news app that uses AI to desensationalize the news

#257

I think this is an amazing idea! The only flaw I see with it is that without the sensationalized headlines I read through going "Oh that doesn't matter, that doesn't matter either" etc haha I haven't found an article that sounds interesting in a few scrolls. I mean, it's great because it's accurate. Half of the "news" we're fed is sensationalized so we'll click on it and it's really nothing but it gets us riled up ab…

> The only flaw I see with it is that without the sensationalized headlines I read through going "Oh that doesn't matter, that doesn't matter either" etc

That's a feature, not a bug. The 'news' is 90% useless, if not descrutive, information. Ask yourself: what percentage of the news is optimal to maintain your worldly wisdom? I'd guess about 1%. So getting it down to 10% is half way there, on a logarithmic scale.

Re: Show HN: Boring Report, a news app that uses AI to desensationalize the news

#258
post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is precisely the type of editorial affordance I would expect the AI to strip. This is just another way for media organizations to distort the news. I look forward to those enhancements

AI can just fabricate a new photo for any event.

It sort of becomes obvious when everyone in the photo has seven fingers and two thumbs on each hand.

Re: Show HN: Boring Report, a news app that uses AI to desensationalize the news

#260

Another option is to watch Doordarshan - Indian national news. https://www.youtube.com/@DDIndia

Wouldn't recommend at all. Journalist bodies have been warning about the compromisation of Doordarshan by the government. They have stopped subscribing to the Press Trust of India, which is a highly reputed Reuters like agency, in favour of an RSS aligned, government friendly agency.

https://thewire.in/media/naj-duj-hindusthan-samachar-prasar-...

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