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Do you avoid the news? You’re in growing company

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Re: Do you avoid the news? You’re in growing company

#131

Post by friend_and_foe »

I avoid the news, I don't follow any news. Not a TV channel, a publication, my preferred talking head, the dude on twitter or a guy who does commentary on YouTube. Big or small, I don't care about the news.

It's not because it's all negative. It's because it's all bullshit. Almost all of it is someone who has an interest in changing my worldview so that I behave in ways that are beneficial to them. Often enough its a thinly veiled business funnel. Sometimes it's not like that, it's just noise that is inconsequential to me. But in every single case it isn't worth actively following; if something is important enough you'll hear about it from a person in your life. And probably you'll hear about unimportant things too, everyone knows at least one person who won't shut up about Trump this Biden that.

I'd say my life is better. I see these news addicts and theyre all just bitter, anxious basket cases constantly chewing their nails to a nub about some shit that their life would not change one bit if they didn't even know about, besides the anxiety they get from knowing about it of course.

Re: Do you avoid the news? You’re in growing company

#133

Post by TySchultz »

alberth wrote: post #75

I've completely cut out watching/reading news, with 1 exception. https://www.newsminimalist.com I stumbled across it on HN sometime back. Someone created an AI model to consume daily, thousands of news sources, scores the articles and lists what it's highest scored for the day. --- Ironically, APNews use to work this way. They provide a "relevance score" for every news article they published/reported so that other ou…

Thanks for sharing newsminimalist. I've unknowingly built nearly the same thing but more visual with additions like maps and images. Similar to Yahoo News Digest from years back.

I like the "relevance score", it would be interesting to implement something similar to that.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/quill-news-digest/id1669557131

Re: Do you avoid the news? You’re in growing company

#134

Post by boveus »

tekla wrote: post #21
starttoaster wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There was no need to follow the result of every individual rocket volley in the Ukraine or each individual comment from a politician. This is really it. Who has the time or the emotional bandwidth to spare for following all of this? I was talking to somebody about the overturning of affirmative action, and their response to me was basically "if you haven't read the Supreme Court opinions on this matter, we can't ha…

> That opinions pdf on supremecourt.gov is 237 pages long. I need to read multiple news articles and then a novel just to have an opinion on something now? That's cool, I just won't then. It's incredibly hard to have a conversation on a complex legal document if you do not read the legal document.

People on HN have conversations about things they didn't read every day.

Re: Do you avoid the news? You’re in growing company

#135

Post by rdtsc »

> Part of the problem, he says, is that publishers are in hot pursuit of news consumers who are willing to pay for news — subscription buyers, in other words — and shape their offerings around the perceived needs and interests of customers who are relatively affluent, educated and “politically interested.”

I wonder what the next trick might be. Manufacture the news! Someone goes out at night and spray paints some obscenities on the main street intersection, then in the morning they report on it "everyone get angry, look at what just happened". I am joking, of course...

To be serious though, they reap what the saw. And I guess found out that selecting on what to report and how is not too far from "manufacturing" the news. They found in the short term getting people enraged/engaged (there is only one letter difference!) with and divisively selected headlines was great for business. In the long term, people become disillusioned because they see through the dishonesty, hostility and bias after a while.

Re: Do you avoid the news? You’re in growing company

#136

Post by friend_and_foe »

jameslk wrote: post #116

The irony of Hacker News commenters saying they avoid the news on a site called Hacker News...

Yeah but this site isn't about "the news"...

Honestly I click maybe less than 10% of all articles I see on this site. Usually I like to read the ones that are about interesting new studies or computation breakthroughs, and I do like to chime in on some controversial topics from time to time when they pop up and I think my input could be beneficial to someone reading it.

Re: Do you avoid the news? You’re in growing company

#137

Post by nonethewiser »

avalys wrote: post #4

The single biggest problem with America today is the presentation and consumption of national news, political commentary and public policy as entertainment. The media has figured out that America is the ultimate reality TV show and they present it as such. Cable TV and the internet are to blame for this. I don't know what could be done about it. But we'd be way better off if "the news" was something you could watch f…

> The single biggest problem with America today is the presentation and consumption of national news, political commentary and public policy as entertainment.

That's a very bold claim but I can't say it's wild. The news is supposed to be a critical source of information but I think the effect is a net negative. By a large margin. It's a pretty perverse situation.

I don't think the government should ban news or anything. That's obviously bad. But society would probably be better off without it (as-is), as extreme as that would be.

Re: Do you avoid the news? You’re in growing company

#138

Post by jameslk »

shortcrct wrote: post #132
jameslk wrote: post #116

The irony of Hacker News commenters saying they avoid the news on a site called Hacker News...

I get your point, but let's not sit here and convince ourselves that the front page of HN is the same as the front page of CNN, Fox, or WaPo.

This is HN right? I believe I'm justified in my pedantry /s

Jokes aside, I think it is partially disingenuous for others to claim they avoid news on this site. It might not be the front page of a major news site, but there's plenty of politics and doom here too. Perhaps it feels less like news to others since it better fits the beliefs/expectations of the in-group.

Re: Do you avoid the news? You’re in growing company

#139

Post by cbsmith »

avalys wrote: post #4

The single biggest problem with America today is the presentation and consumption of national news, political commentary and public policy as entertainment. The media has figured out that America is the ultimate reality TV show and they present it as such. Cable TV and the internet are to blame for this. I don't know what could be done about it. But we'd be way better off if "the news" was something you could watch f…

> But we'd be way better off if "the news" was something you could watch from 7 PM - 8 PM if you were interested, or something you could read in a printed newspaper if you were really interested, and otherwise the general public could ignore it.

Essentially this is arguing for limited distribution & gatekeepers for the news. That would almost certainly be better for society, but there's the problem with disenfranchisement & how you select/entrust gatekeepers. I don't think the "old" solutions to those problems were particularly good.

Re: Do you avoid the news? You’re in growing company

#140

Post by JohnFen »

taude wrote: post #28
jwells89 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But we'd be way better off if "the news" was something you could watch from 7 PM - 8 PM if you were interested, or something you could read in a printed newspaper if you were really interested, and otherwise the general public could ignore it. This is how the news was for me as a 90s kid who only had over the air channels for TV. 6:00-6:30PM was local news, 6:30-7:00PM was World News Tonight with Peter Jennings. Ou…

Even in the early 90s news started shifting towards our modern incarnation. CNN was considered hard news in the 80s, but that changed around the time of the Persian Gulf war and Wolf Blitzer becoming the Scud-Stud, and all the other shows like Cross-Fire becoming news-er-tainment (or whatever the proper industry term is), etc...

> CNN was considered hard news in the 80s

I blame CNN for much of the state of news today. TV news has always been poor, but before CNN proved otherwise, news was not something that was considered a profit-maker. Once CNN showed it can make money, then the profit maximalization began in earnest, and with that came the descent into news-as-entertainment.

That started well before the gulf war.

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