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I Hate the News (2006)

aaronsw.com

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Re: I Hate the News (2006)

#101

Post by vuldin »

The top address that appears in the dropdown list when I type 'news' is this site. Other hits show up, but the vast majority are related to something 'new' instead.

I used to be a serious news junky, keeping track of everything that happened related to politics or the latest war. I'd even research what was happening regarding local politics in the place I was traveling to just in case the topic came up while I was with some people from that area. I monitored RSS feeds from various news outlets and blogs from others who also watched the news, and over time it became impossible for me to keep up with it.

After that point of realization (that it was impossible for me to keep up with all this information), I then realized that it really didn't matter anyway! The world did not end, my favored side didn't win any less and my most hated side didn't win any more... I just had more time to focus on things that really mattered to me. I probably now have a better state of well-being on top of it all.

Re: I Hate the News (2006)

#102

Post by sparkzilla »

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.

You may like Newslines, we curate news by time. http://newslines.org/

Re: I Hate the News (2006)

#103

Post by JoshTriplett »

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…

> It's like voting - my vote doesn't matter, but on aggregate it's everything.

Circle of concern versus circle of control. Pay attention to things proportionally to the amount of control you have over them, rather than worrying disproportionately. (And if you want to care more than that about something, find a way to have more influence on that something.) If you have a vote on something, you have a non-zero but very tiny amount of control over it; spend time educating yourself appropriately. But the vast majority of news stories discuss items that should not in any way affect the actions of the people watching them.

Also, considering that later in this thread you explicitly describe your service as being for "news junkies"...

Re: I Hate the News (2006)

#104

Post by austenallred »

sparkzilla wrote: post #100
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 don't think you agree with Swartz at all. You used an article that explains why someone does not read the news to promote your news site. According to the article, Swartz wasn't looking for an alternative way to consume news: he decries the news industry as a whole. I'm all for self-promotion on HN when it's relevant, but Grasswire appears to be exactly the kind of thing Swartz would not be interested in. If you we…

I started the news site because I have the same frustrations Swartz has. Most of the news is bullshit and a worthless time-suck. All of the examples he uses, all of the websites out there, feel completely irrelevant to me and not interesting whatsoever.

I disagree with him that it's 100% - I think it's just 99.9%, and that .01% is valuable. Perhaps that's a major difference, but Swartz's point was that it's not valuable enough to waste time on. I'd like to think that if he could spend 30 seconds to get that .01% of important news he would feel differently. But, of course, we'll never know.

Re: I Hate the News (2006)

#105

Post by austenallred »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #103
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…

> It's like voting - my vote doesn't matter, but on aggregate it's everything. Circle of concern versus circle of control. Pay attention to things proportionally to the amount of control you have over them, rather than worrying disproportionately. (And if you want to care more than that about something, find a way to have more influence on that something.) If you have a vote on something, you have a non-zero but very…

That's a really good frame of reference, I think. Thank you for that.

I consider our service like Wikipedia - there is a small collection of people who are just abnormally fascinated by the news - the 1% of news junkies who want to see what's happening, vet it, and tell you if it's wrong. The biproduct of that is that the 99% of "normal people" get a news digest that contains only the most important info, that's easily digestible.

So the current website is for news junkies, just like the "talk/edit" part of Wikipedia is for... encyclopedia junkies? The daily email and coming read-only stuff is what I hope is appropriate for 99% of people, including someone like Swartz.

Re: I Hate the News (2006)

#106

Post by afarrell »

neilk wrote: post #97

Let's say we never had "the news", and we all decided we needed to help society understand and react to novel events. Would we invent newspapers and cable channels? I don't think so. When modern institutions realize they have an information distribution problem, they don't get a bunch of ink-stained, dubiously sober arts graduates with no special qualifications, and tell them to write stories. They pay people to do r…

Who is the "we" that is doing the inventing? The News God[1] with the power to correct perverse incentives and keep prisoners from defecting? Doesn't exist. The committee of Folks Who Care About Policy And Represent a Broad Cross-Section of Society but Don't Get into Stupid Arguments? Doesn't exist.

Even if they did, an organization would discover that they could get more views and exert more power using titilatory stories. What you propose is not a stable Nash Equilibrium.

[1] http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/

EDIT: re-read and that seems to be kinda your point. Apologies if it is and I'm oddly argumentative.

To continue, one reason why organizations use stories is that stories are one of the data structures more efficiently-implemented in our minds.

Re: I Hate the News (2006)

#107

Post by neilk »

afarrell wrote: post #106
neilk wrote: post #97

Let's say we never had "the news", and we all decided we needed to help society understand and react to novel events. Would we invent newspapers and cable channels? I don't think so. When modern institutions realize they have an information distribution problem, they don't get a bunch of ink-stained, dubiously sober arts graduates with no special qualifications, and tell them to write stories. They pay people to do r…

Who is the "we" that is doing the inventing? The News God[1] with the power to correct perverse incentives and keep prisoners from defecting? Doesn't exist. The committee of Folks Who Care About Policy And Represent a Broad Cross-Section of Society but Don't Get into Stupid Arguments? Doesn't exist. Even if they did, an organization would discover that they could get more views and exert more power using titilatory s…

This is a great point, but we also know that institutional, internal information distribution systems, of the kind I mentioned, don't fall prey to that. (They may fall prey to other things -- agreeing with the boss, groupthink, etc.)

Anyway the reason why is because they have different incentives. The question is how to make incentives like that work for society, hopefully while keeping the critical independence of the media. We can't imagine that now, but we have new funding forms like Kickstarter, and Wikipedia is an existence proof for achieving consensus about what claims are well-sourced.

But I think we agree that it's not a great idea to run society on an information system that gets paid every time it stimulates our basest impulses for the lowest possible cost. The endgame of that is Buzzfeed.

Re: I Hate the News (2006)

#108

Post by sparkzilla »

austenallred wrote: post #104
sparkzilla wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you agree with Swartz at all. You used an article that explains why someone does not read the news to promote your news site. According to the article, Swartz wasn't looking for an alternative way to consume news: he decries the news industry as a whole. I'm all for self-promotion on HN when it's relevant, but Grasswire appears to be exactly the kind of thing Swartz would not be interested in. If you we…

I started the news site because I have the same frustrations Swartz has. Most of the news is bullshit and a worthless time-suck. All of the examples he uses, all of the websites out there, feel completely irrelevant to me and not interesting whatsoever. I disagree with him that it's 100% - I think it's just 99.9%, and that .01% is valuable. Perhaps that's a major difference, but Swartz's point was that it's not valua…

I find it interesting that someone who is making a news site would say that most of the news is "bullshit and a worthless time suck". Are you really saying that just 0.1% of the news on your site has value? Perhaps you should take Swartz's advice and stop fighting to improve something that has so little value to you.

Re: I Hate the News (2006)

#109

Post by JoshTriplett »

austenallred wrote: post #105
JoshTriplett wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's like voting - my vote doesn't matter, but on aggregate it's everything. Circle of concern versus circle of control. Pay attention to things proportionally to the amount of control you have over them, rather than worrying disproportionately. (And if you want to care more than that about something, find a way to have more influence on that something.) If you have a vote on something, you have a non-zero but very…

That's a really good frame of reference, I think. Thank you for that. I consider our service like Wikipedia - there is a small collection of people who are just abnormally fascinated by the news - the 1% of news junkies who want to see what's happening, vet it, and tell you if it's wrong. The biproduct of that is that the 99% of "normal people" get a news digest that contains only the most important info, that's easi…

A vetting process seems like a useful filter, but it's not a sufficient one. Vetting doesn't necessarily affect stories that are factually accurate but irrelevant.

What is your definition of "important"? Or, more importantly, what definition of "important" does your community of "news junkies" apply? Because almost by definition, those "news junkies" have a different idea of what's important than other people do.

Re: I Hate the News (2006)

#110

Post by rckrd »

Agreed. I especially agree that yellow journalism in particular is a useless distraction.

That being said, there is a certain beauty to experiencing things in the moment.

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