NewsNotFound: An open-source, unbiased news company • Hacker News Board

Re: NewsNotFound: An open-source, unbiased news company

#151

Post by cudgy » Sat, Apr 22, 2023, 3:20 PM UTC

newsnotfound wrote: post #144

numbsafari wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no such thing as unbiased news. Anyone claiming to be unbiased, rather than wearing their biases on their sleeves, is lying to you, or themselves, or they are just ignorant. Likely some combination of all three.

I realise now that my messaging with this project is off. What would more accurately explain the purpose of this project is to reduce the effects of sensationalism and indoctrination in the news. In other words, provide a platform for readers to make up their own opinions on news stories by filtering out the positive/negative language. Even if NewsNotFound articles are only 90% neutral, that's 90% BETTER than reading…

I wonder if this is true in reality. Isn’t it possible and maybe even likely that a non-neutral party is providing the most accurate version of the story? For example, a person or reporter living in a war zone, experiencing the actual war is likely biased in some fashion, but their recollections of what is actually happening is quite accurate compared to a “neutral” journalist sitting in their comfortable office in New York City, referring to various anonymous sources and reports from multiple perspectives.

Also, filtering out the positive and negative language might hide the bias of the article, making it seem more authoritative and believable. Many times when I read an article, and I see the journalist making conclusions with bombastic and unbalanced language, it is helpful information toward allowing me to detect bullshit and avoid that source.

Re: NewsNotFound: An open-source, unbiased news company

#152

Post by eric-burel » Sat, Apr 22, 2023, 3:36 PM UTC

Honestly, I think "less-biased" would be more appropriate than "unbiased" and lead to less criticism. Otherwise cool project, I like the style of the generated illustrations.

Re: NewsNotFound: An open-source, unbiased news company

#153

Post by Loquebantur » Sat, Apr 22, 2023, 3:41 PM UTC

newsnotfound wrote: post #146

Loquebantur wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine, you had some tool affording you complete information about everything happening on earth, aided by some AI that only tells the truth about anything when asked . You would still have to pose the right questions or risk dying in ignorance. People's complaints here about bias is really about being manipulated successfully by parts of society working actively in their own, markedly different, interests. Those wo…

Very good point. I realise now that my messaging with this project is off. What would more accurately explain the purpose of this project is to reduce the effects of sensationalism and indoctrination in the news. In other words, provide a platform for readers to make up their own opinions on news stories by filtering out the excessive positive/negative language. Even if NewsNotFound articles are only 90% neutral, tha…

If I understand correctly, you want to help people get an objective baseline of information about the world, they then can compare their individual bias against. Only thing is, I don't think most people care about that.

Humans provide their sentiment about developments to further their individual interests. Other people want to be informed about those motivations. Taking that away makes news subjectively meaningless for most.

There is a minority of truth-seekers who essentially individually engage in OSINT activity (if only by consuming more than one source).

An AI "doing the thinking for them" isn't the right way though (trust is an issue, remember). You want to teach people, how to be an intelligence analyst and give them the tools to avoid the drudgery.

Re: NewsNotFound: An open-source, unbiased news company

#154

Post by devinprater » Sat, Apr 22, 2023, 3:59 PM UTC

After the skip to contents link, there are five unlabeled links, and after that is the news not found logo link. After the contact link, there is an unlabeled button, which is followed by the heading "NewsNotFound: An AI-Powered, Unbiased News Website". If these can be fixed, I think this could be a nice accessible site.

Re: NewsNotFound: An open-source, unbiased news company

#155

Post by trinsic2 » Sat, Apr 22, 2023, 3:59 PM UTC

AiaAidan wrote: post #21

As someone who has worked in the media industry, I can tell you that the problem with unbiased news goes much deeper than simply presenting facts objectively. The very first step mentioned in your breakdown - scraping the latest headlines from publicly available news sites - is inherently biased, because it relies on a small selection of sources to determine what is considered newsworthy. But by whom? In reality, edi…

I think the The idea of this is interesting but I agree with you, Using titles to correlate results that are fact based isn't a greatest way to find unbiased information. You would still need some kind of variable that was not so well known. echo chambers are created by repeating information in similar ways. Its been my experience that echo chambers usually are the least reliable.

Re: NewsNotFound: An open-source, unbiased news company

#156

Post by adfm » Sat, Apr 22, 2023, 4:26 PM UTC

It’s up to the individual to diversify and triangulate their news sources. Open source news and open source software are two different things, so keep that in mind when parsing this. It’s up to everyone to call out poor journalism when they see it. That includes omissions and conflations.

Re: NewsNotFound: An open-source, unbiased news company

#157

Post by impool00100 » Sat, Apr 22, 2023, 4:36 PM UTC

What if "Bias is inherent and unavoidable in all Human Thought & Experience" is the correct answer?

How can any particular Individual be "unbiased"? It's impossible. Yet only an individual is "alive" and "living" the way it is legally/socially defined.

Re: NewsNotFound: An open-source, unbiased news company

#158

Post by revelio » Sat, Apr 22, 2023, 4:43 PM UTC

JoeJonathan wrote: post #106

revelio wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has some big and pretty frequent wins in that department compared to any other culture or industry.

Such as?

Most obviously the tech industry has disempowered the telco business. They are now just "dumb pipes", whereas once they wanted to be all singing all dancing content providers. Wikipedia replaced Britannica. Linux has largely replaced Microsoft. iTunes Store and Spotify took away a lot of the power that RIAA had over artists.

If you want to focus purely on governmental institutions then encryption put intel agencies / corrupt police on the back foot and the digitization of processes especially payments has killed off a lot of low level corruption.

What other industry has such a record?

Re: NewsNotFound: An open-source, unbiased news company

#159

Post by wolverine876 » Sat, Apr 22, 2023, 4:45 PM UTC

rajin444 wrote: post #10

wolverine876 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In addition to the completely unfounded and false claim that AI is unbiased, there's this: > This is the key to a trusted news company - complete transparency and the opportunity for anyone, anywhere to contribute. Why do I want anyone, anywhere? What does that have to do with news? I want to hear from the best, not from the entire range.

Who defines the best? Who defines unbiased? It all comes down to who you trust.

It takes real judgement and critical thought. It can't be done by algorithm. Sorry I have no easy answer for life.

Re: NewsNotFound: An open-source, unbiased news company

#160

Post by denton-scratch » Sat, Apr 22, 2023, 5:00 PM UTC

pydry wrote: post #148

grumbel wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd much rather have one that tried to be objective, than just one that embraces their bias. The later one will always be terrible at reporting. The former at least has a chance of being good. Seriously, the bar is not exactly high. Start with telling me where and when something happen, make a time line if it's a series of events. Tell me who is involved. Don't dress it in flowery language, make it as simple as possi…

I used to think this but increasingly I think it's a fool's errand. Wikipedia might have been like that in the past but it's long been corrupted. E.g. see the Philip Cross affair. For a while on the Ukraine war I tried to find unbiased commentary and news but I think it was basically impossible. The best I could find after looking all over was stitching together stories from sources who were biased to one side but st…

> For a while on the Ukraine war I tried to find unbiased commentary

There's no hope of finding unbiased commentary on a war that's happening NOW. Even the history of wars that happened 1,000 years ago are hopelessly muddied by contemporary political agendas.

As far as Wikipedia is concerned, history is one of the areas that's least trustworthy; lots of history articles have teams of gatekeepers. It can help to read the talk pages (and the archives of the talk pages) to find out what's been disputed.

The fact that you can do that, and also inspect the entire edit history, really does make Wikipedia head and shoulders better than any other information resource, provided you read it with due scepticism.