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Negativity drives online news consumption

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Re: Negativity drives online news consumption

#131

Post by HPsquared »

sammalloy wrote: post #106
initramfs wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hah, the person below you did a nice imitation. They forgot "Assuming the daughter" not son. But more seriously, the reason people indoctrinate isn't because they want them to be negative, but to realize that being pessimistic is actually going to be a more reliable way to have a plan for life when no one is able to help. For example, if your car breaks down and your cell phone battery is around 30%- you have time to…

> the reason people indoctrinate isn't because they want them to be negative, but to realize that being pessimistic is actually going to be a more reliable way to have a plan for life when no one is able to help I take it you are a conservative. This is a perennial city people (liberal) versus rural folk (conservative) discussion that will never have a resolution. Liberals generally don’t believe in the idea that "no…

Urban living is more anonymous and alienating than rural living.

There are too many people in a city to form relationships with everyone, you don't know 99.9% of the people you see in daily life because there are so many moving around. On the other hand in a small village, most times you see another person it's a repeated interaction and you have met that person before.

So the rural conservative view and values on social interaction is more based on repeated interactions with people you already know, whereas the urban liberal has values and prefers systems that work well with anonymous people; the government needs to step in to help people in need (because their neighbours won't).

Re: Negativity drives online news consumption

#132

Post by ar-nelson »

gwbrooks wrote: post #10

Former newspaper city editor here. With few exceptions, positive stories -- although readers clamored for them in surveys -- never drove newsrack sales the way negative stories did. That's why we had a whole section for feel-good features but they didn't usually get prime front-page real estate. In the age of infinite content, headlines have become a sort of drama arms race. But the basic dynamic of what works and wh…

The way I see it, news serves three purposes:

---

1. To let you know about local or world events that could affect you and those close to you.

2. To let you know about world events that affect others far away, in order to judge the effectiveness of political decisions and the necessity of future political decisions.

3. As a form of entertainment derived from the ongoing story of world history (or celebrity gossip, or whatever else).

---

#1 is the reason that news feels important enough that tuning it out completely feels irresponsible, but it's a very small component of most news.

#2 is perhaps necessary for democracy to work, but it's so easy to manipulate, and the incentive to manipulate it is so high, that it's questionable whether this type of news has ever existed without being more manipulation than fact---and this has been true since long before the internet.

#3 is the real reason most people (myself included) read news, even when they convince themselves it's #1 or #2. And it becomes unhealthy because, as long as you're convinced you need to care deeply about what you're reading because it's actually #1 or #2, it will inspire constant anxiety.

I would be interested to see a type of (perhaps government-funded) news service whose sole purpose is to publish only news that fits into category #1: if it is not reasonably likely to affect the average reader in an actionable way in the next 6 months, then it can't be published in this outlet.

Re: Negativity drives online news consumption

#133

Post by phs318u »

nonethewiser wrote: post #119
gwbrooks wrote: post #10

Former newspaper city editor here. With few exceptions, positive stories -- although readers clamored for them in surveys -- never drove newsrack sales the way negative stories did. That's why we had a whole section for feel-good features but they didn't usually get prime front-page real estate. In the age of infinite content, headlines have become a sort of drama arms race. But the basic dynamic of what works and wh…

If the news is inherently skewed towards negativity then maybe it's not as valuable as we assume it is. This isn't an argument against the free press or anything. As bad as bias and fearmongering in news is, adding government oversight would make it way worse. It's just a thought experiment. To elaborate, if news is inherently skewed towards negativity (and I'm just taking that at face value), then maybe it shouldn't…

> The bigger difference is there was just a lot less news. Maybe the world would be better off with less news.

I think you’re close. There was a lot less repetition of news. Now the need to fill endless hours with content means stories are repeated ad nauseam. Keep in mind that repetition is known and used as a torture technique. “Repetition is an important neural linguistic programming interrogation tactic to influence the target mind” [0].

[0] https://neuralguantanamo.com/no-touch-torture-techniques/

Re: Negativity drives online news consumption

#134

Post by claytongulick »

ar-nelson wrote: post #132
gwbrooks wrote: post #10

Former newspaper city editor here. With few exceptions, positive stories -- although readers clamored for them in surveys -- never drove newsrack sales the way negative stories did. That's why we had a whole section for feel-good features but they didn't usually get prime front-page real estate. In the age of infinite content, headlines have become a sort of drama arms race. But the basic dynamic of what works and wh…

The way I see it, news serves three purposes: --- 1. To let you know about local or world events that could affect you and those close to you. 2. To let you know about world events that affect others far away, in order to judge the effectiveness of political decisions and the necessity of future political decisions. 3. As a form of entertainment derived from the ongoing story of world history (or celebrity gossip, or…

State sponsored media generally hasn't worked out too well.

Re: Negativity drives online news consumption

#135

Post by ihateyouall123 »

ctocoder wrote: post #9
olliecornelia wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people are hoping for a catastrophe that will render all their personal problems irrelevant, be it World War III, environmental disasters or societal collapse. Like a snow day for your whole life.

This is a problem to fix, which society has not itself figured out yet. Hope, being good enough, your time is your time and desire mitigation is a solution. Productize and scale happiness

What does this empty platitude mean?

Re: Negativity drives online news consumption

#136

Post by nonethewiser »

zpeti wrote: post #66
adamrezich wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sometime around the 2016 US Presidential elections, when outragebait headlines had arguably achieved a local maximum, I will now never forget how I overcame headline rage forever. I saw some headline about how students at some school, Berkeley I believe, had joined arms and surrounded the front entrance to the school, and would only allow non-white students to go through, forcing white students to go around and enter…

Yeah, I actually get more annoyed when "my own" political side does this. They take the worst possible example of the other side and make outragous article about them. Yet I know most people on the other side are actually good people, with good intentions, we just disagree on a few points. Yet all I ever see in the media are ridiculous parodies of the other side. I've basically stopped almost all politics reading at…

I guess it comes down to caring more about engaging your base than it is appealing to a broader audience. Which is unfortunate.

> Yet I know most people on the other side are actually good people, with good intentions, we just disagree on a few points.

I think this is the attitude most people have if they stop consuming so much news. And I think it dissolves a huge amount of animosity we see between different groups in western society atm.

Re: Negativity drives online news consumption

#138

Post by EGreg »

Just as I have been saying, we need an alternative to the capitalist profit-driven media organizations. Outrage drives “engagement”, for both social networks and for publishers.

All of the profit-driven outleys are subject to market pressures. Even NYTimes which won more Pulitzer prizes than anyone admits to A/B testing headlines for clickbait. Let alone FOX News or YouTubers with “X does Y, immediately regregts it” and “Foo DESTROYS {group we hate}”

The profit motive and private ownership of the social networks and publications inevitably drives people into echo chambers and creates tribalism. Because the market selects for that over anything else. It’s not an accident that Twitter is so toxic, for instance.

Worse than just negativity, the media outlets selectively report on events in order to support their country’s narrative, often due to their government’s pressure. This can lead to wars and misunderstandings between huge populations, leading to violence.

This is why I started https://rational.app

Re: Negativity drives online news consumption

#139

Post by t12hrow »

ar-nelson wrote: post #132
gwbrooks wrote: post #10

Former newspaper city editor here. With few exceptions, positive stories -- although readers clamored for them in surveys -- never drove newsrack sales the way negative stories did. That's why we had a whole section for feel-good features but they didn't usually get prime front-page real estate. In the age of infinite content, headlines have become a sort of drama arms race. But the basic dynamic of what works and wh…

The way I see it, news serves three purposes: --- 1. To let you know about local or world events that could affect you and those close to you. 2. To let you know about world events that affect others far away, in order to judge the effectiveness of political decisions and the necessity of future political decisions. 3. As a form of entertainment derived from the ongoing story of world history (or celebrity gossip, or…

> perhaps government-funded

I suggest the opposite. I'd like a proof that there is no government involvement.

Believe it or not, I think the closest to this is ideal is 4chan /pol/. It's not backed by any major corporation (unlike HN which is backed by Y Combinator), it's not partly owned by Tencent/China (unlike Reddit), and so on. There's no algorithm, there's no karma, there's no blue badge, it barely scrapes by using shady NSFW ads. That's the closest to the libertarian anarchy ideal we had in 90s.

There's of course alphabet agencies mining data and pushing narratives, but that's fine.

Re: Negativity drives online news consumption

#140

Post by throw__away7391 »

nonethewiser wrote: post #128
throw__away7391 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a whole category of widely believed and oft repeated historical myths that originated from journalists trying to sell newspapers, writing articles that were later cited as "contemporary accounts" once the truth had faded from living memory. A few examples; the Titanic was never called unsinkable until after it sank, no one committed suicide on Black Friday as a result of the stock market crash, and there was…

That's interesting. I'm not sure what you point is. I think it reinforces my point that news in the past wasn't necessarily more informative. I'm not really sure though.

That it has never lived up to being the bastion of truth and democracy it's sometimes made out to be, it has always been about getting eyeballs and selling ads.

These examples are more "sensational" than negative, but it is essentially the same idea.

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