I Hate the News (2006) • Hacker News Board

Re: I Hate the News (2006)

#11

Post by Max_Mustermann » Wed, Mar 18, 2015, 1:12 PM UTC

dublinben wrote: post #9

Ciantic wrote: post #6

I wish news sites had a periodical system built-in. One could choose the period, e.g. 7 days to the past, and see all important news from that time-frame. It would of course require a human to tag the news as important within a period. Subscriber only feature would suffice.

That sounds exactly like a weekly news magazine. There are quite a few that are worth reading, if you want to follow the news. The slower publishing pace allows a greater perspective and context on most stories that is missing on 24/7 channels.

Could you post some examples? Specifically ones that center on world news and not only the US / Europe.

Re: I Hate the News (2006)

#12

Post by lovelearning » Wed, Mar 18, 2015, 1:12 PM UTC

I've developed similar views of late, especially on political news and online comments.

I feel all those thousands of comments, mini essays, online slugfests, number of likes or dislikes on politics are not going to change even a little how governments work or how decisions are made. I feel I've wasted too much time on such things.

I still follow tech news though, simply because it's interesting to me.

As for crimes and scandals, well, it's not called "crime porn" for nothing!

Re: I Hate the News (2006)

#13

Post by djoldman » Wed, Mar 18, 2015, 1:12 PM UTC

"They point out that newspapers are a key part of our democracy, that by exposing wrong-doing to the people, they force the wrong-doers to stop. This seems to be true, but the curious thing is that I’m never involved."

The sad irony of this statement is profound.

Re: I Hate the News (2006)

#14

Post by samastur » Wed, Mar 18, 2015, 1:15 PM UTC

austenallred wrote: post #8

I, strangely enough, agree with Most of what Aaron says. And I'm the founder of a news company. I worry about this attitude on a macro scale, but it's hard to argue with on a micro one. I spend most of my day following what's going on in the world, and it hasn't added much value to my life. But I worry about everyone not caring. Not because that would kill my company (I started it because I hate news in its current f…

I guess I must be too dense, but I simply do not know how to use grasswire.

I'm stuck with live feed on left which shows me exactly the kind of useless "breaking" stuff I want to avoid and popular feed on the right which I don't seem to be able to control beyond either providing fact-check or comment.

What am I missing?

Re: I Hate the News (2006)

#15

Post by jheriko » Wed, Mar 18, 2015, 1:15 PM UTC

News does serve at least one basic function, even if many other things can do the same: It gives you something to talk about and ask opinions on.

Re: I Hate the News (2006)

#16

Post by detaro » Wed, Mar 18, 2015, 1:15 PM UTC

I know the feeling, but I worry about the consequences. There are news I think as many people as possible should process. How is democracy or any discussion as a society supposed to work if people don't know about the issues going on? It is a problem that seemingly all news channels use "wrong" selection criteria about what to report, including a lot of things that are not directly important, leading to fatigue and news that are only consumed, not processed. Of course, there probably is no "right" selection of issues, just differently flavored biases.

Many issues that are sort of important I ignore because I can't see how I am supposed to get to an educated opinion about them. There is so much noise and bias going around that I don't have the time and abilities to aggregate them down myself, and no way to know which external aggregation to trust.

Re: I Hate the News (2006)

#17

Post by Mikeb85 » Wed, Mar 18, 2015, 1:19 PM UTC

austenallred wrote: post #8

I, strangely enough, agree with Most of what Aaron says. And I'm the founder of a news company. I worry about this attitude on a macro scale, but it's hard to argue with on a micro one. I spend most of my day following what's going on in the world, and it hasn't added much value to my life. But I worry about everyone not caring. Not because that would kill my company (I started it because I hate news in its current f…

> ruthlessly curated and fact-checked

The problem with curated news is that we can be consuming propaganda and not know it.

Even as it stands now, we hear of certain news in the world, but not others, and it severely affects our understanding of the world.

Re: I Hate the News (2006)

#18

Post by austenallred » Wed, Mar 18, 2015, 1:19 PM UTC

samastur wrote: post #14

austenallred wrote: post #8

I, strangely enough, agree with Most of what Aaron says. And I'm the founder of a news company. I worry about this attitude on a macro scale, but it's hard to argue with on a micro one. I spend most of my day following what's going on in the world, and it hasn't added much value to my life. But I worry about everyone not caring. Not because that would kill my company (I started it because I hate news in its current f…

I guess I must be too dense, but I simply do not know how to use grasswire. I'm stuck with live feed on left which shows me exactly the kind of useless "breaking" stuff I want to avoid and popular feed on the right which I don't seem to be able to control beyond either providing fact-check or comment. What am I missing?

What you're looking at is kind of like a backend - consider it the "talk" page for Wikipedia.

It's a little bit chaotic this early in the morning, but our algorithm pulls in the "breaking" stuff on the left, and the most upvoted stuff flows to the top of the "popular" page. Grasswire users fact-check stuff for accuracy, and comment on whether or not/why it's important. The site is mostly for news junkies. It's a little bit hectic right now because a bunch of people from HN are just upvoting random stuff to screw everything up, and it will take the power users a minute to sort through it.

The result is at the end of the day, the best stuff curated and fact-checked by a couple thousand people, and we send that out to the everyday person in an email they can digest in 30 seconds. We're adding a short, editable description to each news item to give some background, and allowing anyone to submit external stuff, so it's still a work in progress, but that's the gist of it.

Re: I Hate the News (2006)

#19

Post by bovermyer » Wed, Mar 18, 2015, 1:21 PM UTC

Ciantic wrote: post #6

I wish news sites had a periodical system built-in. One could choose the period, e.g. 7 days to the past, and see all important news from that time-frame. It would of course require a human to tag the news as important within a period. Subscriber only feature would suffice.

This is more difficult than it sounds. The curation part, anyway. "Important" is a pretty subjective, and flexible, term. Something that might seem innocuous now could well have far-reaching ramifications twenty years from now.

Re: I Hate the News (2006)

#20

Post by Mikeb85 » Wed, Mar 18, 2015, 1:22 PM UTC

detaro wrote: post #16

I know the feeling, but I worry about the consequences. There are news I think as many people as possible should process. How is democracy or any discussion as a society supposed to work if people don't know about the issues going on? It is a problem that seemingly all news channels use "wrong" selection criteria about what to report, including a lot of things that are not directly important, leading to fatigue and n…

> How is democracy or any discussion as a society supposed to work if people don't know about the issues going on?

It's not supposed to work. Democracy makes us fell like we have a say in politics, but we really don't.

If we did, there wouldn't be mass surveillance, governments wouldn't be taking away our rights, and criminalizing entire segments of the population.

But hey, at least we can vote once every few years, for one of two to four candidates who claim to be different (but really just work for the same interests anyway).