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Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

scientificamerican.com

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Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#141

Post by CamperBob2 »

seneca wrote: post #110
jquery wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve generally found that overtly biased outlets on the right aren’t a huge source of outrage for me because their spin is so blatant—once I notice the propaganda, it’s easy to tune out. The bigger frustration is knowing how many people take that coverage at face value. It’s not quite the same “outrage” the article describes, though. By contrast, the NYT often feels more subtle and therefore more effective at stoking…

You're absolutely correct, but you're missing an important detail. I'm assuming you're more aligned politically with the left. If you're not, I apologize for the assumption. To someone who is more right-wing, the bias of e.g. NYT is just as blatant as Fox News is to you, and Fox may come off as "fair". This is because the propaganda is specifically intended to land with their own audience. It's tuned to your sensibil…

To someone who is more right-wing, the bias of e.g. NYT is just as blatant as Fox News is to you, and Fox may come off as "fair". This is because the propaganda is specifically intended to land with their own audience. It's tuned to your sensibilities.

This isn't really a matter of subjective opinion, though. Objective surveys have consistently shown that Fox News viewers are worse-informed than people who don't pay attention to any conventional news sources. NYT readers are a long way up from there.

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#142

Post by sporkydistance »

joshdavham wrote: post #42

One thing to consider for those of us who are more sensitive to online outrage is to just quit social media all together. I’m technically gen z and I’ve been off of social media (aside from HN, WhatsApp and discord) for years and you wouldn’t believe how great it’s been for my overall state of mind. Reddit, instagram, X, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, Threads, etc are all the equivalent of digital junk food and I’d argu…

Why do you exclude HN from your list? It is literally social media, but with the dial turned down a little. Yet, you don't have to dig to deeply to see flamewars, outrage, and trolling. I mean, look at many of the garbage comments in this very thread that are on par with /.,xchan.

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#143

Post by teddyh »

crispyambulance wrote: post #47
yowayb wrote: post #9

Those of us in the west tend to forget that much of what we see is a form of propaganda, whether by governments or businesses, or even a large number of people. When you keep this in mind, everything you see becomes an opinion and your mind can comfortably (or at least not emotionally/hurriedly) form your own opinion over time.

I had used ublock-origin on youtube to disable the right-hand sidebar of "recommended" videos so that I could just view the stuff in my subscriptions. A couple of years ago, they started detecting and blocking ublock-origin, so I stopped using it (ublock). It's not really the ads that bother me. It's the "recommended videos". Is there a way to customize my view of youtube to avoid the shit I don't need to see? The th…

I recommend: https://lawrencehook.com/rys/>

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#144

Post by jmyeet »

ge96 wrote: post #123
joshdavham wrote: post #42

One thing to consider for those of us who are more sensitive to online outrage is to just quit social media all together. I’m technically gen z and I’ve been off of social media (aside from HN, WhatsApp and discord) for years and you wouldn’t believe how great it’s been for my overall state of mind. Reddit, instagram, X, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, Threads, etc are all the equivalent of digital junk food and I’d argu…

I quit reddit too recently, I still look at it for info but I'm not logged in/scrolling through it I find myself reaching for something when I have YouTube/chilling at my desk at the end of the day, can't code anymore/make something just on till I sleep. Sometimes have the desire to play a video game (I have a gaming rig too funny how that works) I've been trying to read HN or IEEE, TechCrunch stuff like that as my "…

The Instagram dating thing is because, in the heteronormative sense, a guy without one odd WAY more likely to be cheating. If you’re in a relationship, even if you don’t post, your significant other will likely tag you in their posts.

I’ve never really understood doomscrolling on Twitter or Reddit. The only social media I find remotely useful out entertaining is actually TikTok. The comments are IME the least toxic and most entertaining. And I’ve gone down fascinating rabbit holes of things that have absolutely no relevance to my life like medical residency TikTok.

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#145

Post by jsbg »

Why is it an axiom that we need to "stay informed"? The vast majority of news is things that don't affect you, and of the things that do affect you, the vast majority of that is things you can't do anything about. And if they do affect you you're sure to find out without following the news. The news is tailored to make you feel outraged so that you will consume more of it.

As far as social media goes, just don't follow accounts that are annoying. If some accounts are friends in real life but insufferable online, just mute them. Other than friends I follow accounts about food and pottery, I don't see any reason to get off social media, I love it.

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#146

Post by sporkydistance »

Isn't this something that marginalized groups have had to deal with since their existence? I mean, there's a reason why in the US black men die at higher rates from heart disease and stress-related illnesses. Is this getting attention now because white people are feeling it? I grew up in the 70's, and the hatred toward gays that erupted in the 80's due to Reagan was impossible to explain to someone born in 2000 who grew up seeing gay people everwhere. Not saying it doesn't need attention, but I think we could probably turned to marginalized groups for tips! (RIP my karma.)

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#147

Post by ge96 »

jmyeet wrote: post #144
ge96 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I quit reddit too recently, I still look at it for info but I'm not logged in/scrolling through it I find myself reaching for something when I have YouTube/chilling at my desk at the end of the day, can't code anymore/make something just on till I sleep. Sometimes have the desire to play a video game (I have a gaming rig too funny how that works) I've been trying to read HN or IEEE, TechCrunch stuff like that as my "…

The Instagram dating thing is because, in the heteronormative sense, a guy without one odd WAY more likely to be cheating. If you’re in a relationship, even if you don’t post, your significant other will likely tag you in their posts. I’ve never really understood doomscrolling on Twitter or Reddit. The only social media I find remotely useful out entertaining is actually TikTok. The comments are IME the least toxic a…

My reddit scrolling wasn't doom for my case. I was either personal topics I liked (cars, computing, software, photography, etc...) or brain rot/stupid shi that's the main reason I've left because I could be more productive than looking at an endless supply of that stuff

You can mute subreddits and not see them anymore

Funny you have to purge the algo on things like YouTube if you click on a thubmnail with some hot chick, boom your feed is nothing but click bait of hot women

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#148

Post by kccoder »

morpheos137 wrote: post #88

If you're outraged by anything that does not directly impact your life you're doing life wrong. We all have limited time and energy. I have never been able to understand people who get emotional over things they read online that have no impact on their day to day life.

> I have never been able to understand people who get emotional over things they read online that have no impact on their day to day life.

Maybe they have more empathy for the plight of others?

Also, it is often the case that the events of today which don't directly affect you, if not stopped, will affect you before you know it, at which point it is too late to do anything about.

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#149

Post by xorvoid »

sporkydistance wrote: post #142
joshdavham wrote: post #42

One thing to consider for those of us who are more sensitive to online outrage is to just quit social media all together. I’m technically gen z and I’ve been off of social media (aside from HN, WhatsApp and discord) for years and you wouldn’t believe how great it’s been for my overall state of mind. Reddit, instagram, X, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, Threads, etc are all the equivalent of digital junk food and I’d argu…

Why do you exclude HN from your list? It is literally social media, but with the dial turned down a little. Yet, you don't have to dig to deeply to see flamewars, outrage, and trolling. I mean, look at many of the garbage comments in this very thread that are on par with /.,xchan.

Yes, but it’s the old skool version of social media and the conversations here are generally higher quality and more genuine. I strongly disagree that it’s “on par with /.,xchan”

HN also doesn’t seem to be as susceptible to rage-baiting / outrage-attention-seeking behavior. Not sure exactly what by this is the case but I’d venture a guess it has a lot to do with (1) “dang”s moderation, and (2) not having a personalized algorithm feed.

I’m increasingly of the view that personalized algorithm feeds generated to select the maximum attention grabbing content for each person is a truly dangerous idea.

Frankly, HN is not that engaging (by modern standards). In fact, probably 60-70% of the articles on the front page are boring to me on any given day. I view this as a feature and not a bug. Why should I expect that everything I look at must be maximally engaging?

I wish more sites were old skool like HN.

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#150

Post by j_bum »

yakhinvadim wrote: post #119

I tried to solve this problem by making AI rank the stories by significance and rewriting the news titles in a boring, factual style. I think it worked quite well, there's only about 10 headlines a day (out of 15k+) that get a significance rating higher than of 5.5 out of 10. It also helps avoiding the overfocus on western issues and actually learn what's happening around the world. https://www.newsminimalist.com/

I love the idea of this tool, but there are serious issues with using LLMs to summarize articles and text. Re: Apple’s Notification Summary Debacle

For example, this headline with a score > 5 is flatly incorrect.

“China launches innovative flying robot to explore Moon's south pole for water resources”

Every article listed in the summary says the launch is planned for 2026.

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