tl;dr - Twitter is not the medium for essays
Naval Ravikant: “The Internet lowers the returns to distributing facts”
21–30 of 63 posts
Re: Naval Ravikant: “The Internet lowers the returns to distributing facts”
#22The press has never been about distributing facts. It’s mostly about manufacturing consent, with small, and quickly corrected deviations from its main purpose.
Re: Naval Ravikant: “The Internet lowers the returns to distributing facts”
#23A gentle reminder that society's decay will continue without your quiet protest of it.
Re: Naval Ravikant: “The Internet lowers the returns to distributing facts”
#24tl;dr - Twitter is not the medium for essays
This is not the actual tl;dr
Re: Naval Ravikant: “The Internet lowers the returns to distributing facts”
#25Make it stop
Re: Naval Ravikant: “The Internet lowers the returns to distributing facts”
#26 > Want to escape? Avoid Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat. Avoid venues and media built around group signaling and conspicuous consumption.
Said a guy...on Twitter...
Re: Naval Ravikant: “The Internet lowers the returns to distributing facts”
#27It's amazing how much the end-user cost of facts has dropped. I used to ride my bike across town to a library and spend an hour finding a fact. Now I can have them on my screen in seconds. One might have thought that as the cost of obtaining facts dropped by 100x, people would consume higher-quality facts. But consuming higher-quality facts requires more effort, so in the end people consume more low-quality facts, li…
Information used to be expensive to produce. Today, facts are expensive to produce (although not as expensive as before) but other option floods the zone because it’s cheap to produce.
Re: Naval Ravikant: “The Internet lowers the returns to distributing facts”
#28"Want to escape? Avoid Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat. Avoid venues and media built around group signaling and conspicuous consumption." Ironically, this only works well if ~everyone does it; if ~nobody does, it isolates those who do.
"Want to escape? Avoid Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat. Avoid venues and media built around group signaling and conspicuous consumption." There won't be any escape, just a move toward smaller more focused online groups each with their own mores. The future looks more like a world of Slacks than a Facebook. It's fascinating that this is happening in both social media and the world (Brexit and the fragmentation of Europe…
[deleted]
Re: Naval Ravikant: “The Internet lowers the returns to distributing facts”
#29This idea that "truth" and "facts" was ever a profitable business comes from a very naive place. With the exception of encyclopedias (and even then...), newspapers (owned by robber barons since day one, and then later mega-corps), text books (read "lies my teacher told me") etc have always been about profit. Newspapers historically were not driven by facts but by classified ads and cartoons. TV, even in its golden ag…
> With the exception of encyclopedias (and even then...), newspapers (owned by robber barons since day one, and then later mega-corps), text books (read "lies my teacher told me") etc have always been about profit.
This is a profoundly naive view of how media works. In the past, advertisers made ad buying decisions based in part on the reputation of the outlet, and circulation of media was dependent on public consensus that something was a reliable source of fact. Tabloids were a niche market that people did not take seriously. Newspapers might make their money on ads and cartoons, but the only reason they were able to command money for their ad space was because people bought and trusted the paper. Now, the profit motive for content creation relies far less on reputation effects. It is possible to make enormous amounts of money even when most people think your content is complete bullshit.
Re: Naval Ravikant: “The Internet lowers the returns to distributing facts”
#30This idea that "truth" and "facts" was ever a profitable business comes from a very naive place. With the exception of encyclopedias (and even then...), newspapers (owned by robber barons since day one, and then later mega-corps), text books (read "lies my teacher told me") etc have always been about profit. Newspapers historically were not driven by facts but by classified ads and cartoons. TV, even in its golden ag…
(Tangent: many countries have national tv channels that are paid by license fees or taxation. These channels strive to be independent, neutral and objective. And although it's quite in fashion to be negative about eg the bbc, I think they succeed really very well.)