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Re: X.com refuses to open with Firefox strict tracking protection enabled

#231

Post by manuelmoreale »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #226
manuelmoreale wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t disagree with your assessment. But would you agree that if we were to pluck people at random from the journalists population and from the Twitter user base, the first group has a higher probability of returning someone who’s trustworthy when it comes to news reporting? I’m not saying there aren’t trustworthy people on Twitter. After all there’s plenty of journalists. But there’s also plenty of shitposters. An…

> But would you agree that if we were to pluck people at random from the journalists population and from the Twitter user base, the first group has a higher probability of returning someone who’s trustworthy when it comes to news reporting? Eh. When the set "journalists" contains all the people who work for the likes of 24 hour cable news networks and the National Enquirer it's not obvious this is even the case. But…

> it's not obvious this is even the case.

It's obvious by the sheer number of people in the two groups. There's some 350M users on Twitter. I'd argue that the chances of me grabbing one at random from that group and fishing out a reliable source of information are lower than if I were to do the same from the entire population of journalists.

The bigger point though is that I'd not pick a random journalist either, I'd select one I observed having a positive track record. We're losing track where this discussion started.

The "pick one at random" is not something I'm suggesting people should do as a strategy. You should invest time and try vet people as best as you can; you should never 100% trust anyone; You should always challenge your own assumptions and biases; You should try as much as you can to find multiple sources on the same story if you care about that particular story.

That's an MO i'd suggest. I personally don't care where people find their sources as long as they're doing their search properly. I'm sure there are quality journalists on Twitter. Same is true for most news outlets. I also know there are a shit ton of trolls and shitposters and grifters on Twitter. And that's not true for most media outlets.

Re: X.com refuses to open with Firefox strict tracking protection enabled

#232

Post by AnthonyMouse »

manuelmoreale wrote: post #231
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But would you agree that if we were to pluck people at random from the journalists population and from the Twitter user base, the first group has a higher probability of returning someone who’s trustworthy when it comes to news reporting? Eh. When the set "journalists" contains all the people who work for the likes of 24 hour cable news networks and the National Enquirer it's not obvious this is even the case. But…

> it's not obvious this is even the case. It's obvious by the sheer number of people in the two groups. There's some 350M users on Twitter. I'd argue that the chances of me grabbing one at random from that group and fishing out a reliable source of information are lower than if I were to do the same from the entire population of journalists. The bigger point though is that I'd not pick a random journalist either, I'd…

> There's some 350M users on Twitter. I'd argue that the chances of me grabbing one at random from that group and fishing out a reliable source of information are lower than if I were to do the same from the entire population of journalists.

The population of journalists has adverse selection because the nature of the industry creates an incentive to attempt to influence opinions rather than merely convey factual information. If you pick one at random you're more likely to get a paid propagandist than you are picking randomly from the population at large.

> I'm sure there are quality journalists on Twitter.

It's not just that. If you take science reporting, for example, even the "quality" journalist outlets will present you with a summary of the results which is often unintentionally inaccurate simply because it's written by someone who doesn't comprehensively understand the research and is under time pressure to publish a story as soon as the research paper is released, even though it's long paper full of domain-specific knowledge that takes time and expertise to digest. Meanwhile they, for whatever reason, consistently fail to link to the original paper, so you have only their inadequate summary.

Whereas there's a decent chance the author of the paper is on Twitter, has posted a short summary of the results which is accurate, and provides the direct link if you want to read it yourself.

And the same with the rest of it. When the major media outlets report the CrowdStrike thing, it's generally along the lines of "an unspecified computer glitch caused flights to be canceled" and then an interview with some rando who tells you to install anti-virus on your PC. When you go somewhere that will give you the full story, you find out the problem was caused by the anti-virus.

See also Gell-Mann Amnesia:

https://loricism.fandom.com/wiki/Gell-Mann_Amnesia_Effect

> I also know there are a shit ton of trolls and shitposters and grifters on Twitter. And that's not true for most media outlets.

See this is where we disagree. Partisan media outlets employ the lowest quality sources of information, because they're purposely selected to manipulate your opinions. They're not just random rubbish, they're explicitly adversarial to objective truth.

That isn't to say that good journalists don't exist, but they are not a majority of "journalists" to be sure.

Re: X.com refuses to open with Firefox strict tracking protection enabled

#233

Post by brigandish »

talldayo wrote: post #225
Anthony-G wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t use Twitter other than – very rarely – following Hacker News links but I still know that being “verified” has no bearing on trustworthiness. The person you’re responding to comes across as quite media savvy so I’d assume the trustworthy sources they’re referring to are people whose previous posts have a solid track record of being reliable, factual and/or insightful. Disclaimer: not being on Twitter, I don’t…

> I don’t actually know how easy it is these days to follow a particular set of accounts that the user trusts You should try it, then. Part of the... uh... "appeal" of Twitter is the algorithmic timeline that suggests content from people you've never seen or heard from before in your life.

The timeline has actually been split into two - "For you", which is suggested accounts; and "Following", which are the accounts you are following. I often switch between the two to take advantage of the difference. Following accounts is as easy as it ever was.

Re: X.com refuses to open with Firefox strict tracking protection enabled

#234

Post by brigandish »

manuelmoreale wrote: post #96
plonk wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other media is frustrating because it's always heavily filtered, has an agenda, and always talks like a PR release. It's like they're trying to keep some image of a respectable paper and so have to write in that stupid title - subtitle that repeats the title - first paragraph that repeats the subtitle - 30 paragraphs in complete disorder, half of which are a waste of time format Edit: someone on Twitter obviously als…

Here's the thing, I agree. But also, you do know that the various news sites have an agenda. It's a fact. And the way you work around it is by reading from multiple sources that have different agendas and form your own opinion based on that. The random Twitter user though? Who the fuck knows. He might be in just for the lols. Maybe they're just bored. Maybe they're actually knowledgeable. You just don't know.

That was a good strategy before sites like Twitter existed. Now, I can watch live feeds and info coming in without any journalists filtering it for me, or actually have them adding info while I consume primary sources.

For example, several times in my life I happen to have caught a live stream that was reported on wildly inaccurately by legacy news media. I happened to watch, for example, the "Covington kids"[0] stream because it was trending on Twitter that day. Knowledge of that reporting travesty should be enough to shake anyone from experiencing the Gell-Mann amnesia effect, and wouldn't have been dispelled by reading several news sites because just so many were involved. Frankly, it was a disgusting and irresponsible response by said journalists and organisations and should lead people to stop reading those publications in their entirety.

That's not the only example, but the idea that powerful "truth seeking" organisations should try and destroy the lives of children because of an agenda and a MAGA hat is an indictment of those organisations. It led to death threats against children.

I'm happy with choosing my own sources of trust, thanks, and it won't be to read from sources that do that kind of thing. I have a thing called basic morality, and encouraging violence against children is a line I'm not willing to cross.

YMMV.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Lincoln_Memorial_confront...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#Gell-Mann_amn...

Re: X.com refuses to open with Firefox strict tracking protection enabled

#235

Post by brigandish »

LastTrain wrote: post #217
chroma wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why you click on the "Following" tab, not the "For you" tab. Also, how is that any different from any other social media platform? Heck, I just opened Apple News and it recommended me a Buzzfeed article titled, "People are sharing moments where they saw millionaire's spoiled kids get humbled by the real world, and it's a trip".

It isn't any different, that is the point. They are all manipulating super-smart you far more than the NY Times was ever capable of doing. The fact that you think you organically found who to follow is really something.

What would finding someone "organically" look like? Even before social media algorithms were a thing, or even before social media was a thing, information was not laid out in some random fashion, or in a way that made any of it equally likely to reach anyone. Seems like a fallacy to me.

Re: X.com refuses to open with Firefox strict tracking protection enabled

#236

Post by brigandish »

isodev wrote: post #110
blfr wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter is by far the best source of news and analysis currently. Outpaced only in some areas by niche, usually also crowd-sourced, sites like HN. A week ago twitter had pictures and videos from several angles of assasination attempt on Trump when media still reported "an incident." The difference is wild. Ditching twitter is like going back from old-school news tv to a telegraph. Anyway, I have strict tracking prote…

There was an earthquake the other day, people were talking about it on both Mastodon and Bluesky, twitter didn’t even have a mention until after it was over. Whatever it is on Twitter, it’s a very specific subset of news, usually the kind you also see on breaking news banners in other outlets. Twitter has long been abandoned by everyone of consequence.

There are earthquakes every day in many places, and many of them are inconsequential and hence don't get much of a mention. I know because I live in an earthquake zone and have checked Twitter before to find small earthquakes barely getting a mention because they are like mentioning light rain.

Which earthquake in particular are you referring to?

Re: X.com refuses to open with Firefox strict tracking protection enabled

#237

Post by EgregiousCube »

Qwertious wrote: post #179
EgregiousCube wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the problem is Mozilla. Management has been so bad that Firefox is hard to recommend now. Servo is a great engine but the company behind it isn't earning support and I think it's not going to last. I'll keep using Firefox forks until they don't work, but I won't support Mozilla by using their product directly anymore.

Servo is long gone. Since August 2020, which will be 4 years next month. They've been independent ever since. https://servo.org

Wow, that’s excellent! I missed the news. Really happy to hear this.

Re: X.com refuses to open with Firefox strict tracking protection enabled

#238

Post by celdon25 »

eqvinox wrote: post #207
celdon25 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free speech is hate speech according to some Edit: I just committed hate speech!

Nah my dude, HN just doesn't respond kindly to stupid comments.

lol, not true. You get -4 points at the max. I downvote many stupid comments a day and the hordes just keep coming. Look at all the so-called "researchers" complaining about "open weights" in all the AI threads for exhibit A.

Re: X.com refuses to open with Firefox strict tracking protection enabled

#239

Post by LastTrain »

brigandish wrote: post #235
LastTrain wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't any different, that is the point. They are all manipulating super-smart you far more than the NY Times was ever capable of doing. The fact that you think you organically found who to follow is really something.

What would finding someone "organically" look like? Even before social media algorithms were a thing, or even before social media was a thing, information was not laid out in some random fashion, or in a way that made any of it equally likely to reach anyone. Seems like a fallacy to me.

I never claimed there was an organic way, I just said that “finding” who to follow on social media isn’t. You seem to agree.

Re: X.com refuses to open with Firefox strict tracking protection enabled

#240

Post by ScottJacksonB1 »

heraldgeezer wrote: post #192
jimnotgym wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you do something extreme, like discussing Donald Trump rather than hero worshipping him?

This was way back before Musk. I suspect my account got hacked, but I was able to login and just delete it. Did not think about it, but now if I make a new one with my phone number it errors out on the phone part.

https://www.facebook.com/abdulazeez.muhammadjamiu.18 Drop a message for him on Facebook for fast and secured recovery
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