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Negativity drives online news consumption

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Re: Negativity drives online news consumption

#351

Post by themitigating »

rightbyte wrote: post #104
themitigating wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I watched a farewell video of a very far right person dying of Covid. He didn't get vaccinated but I don't know if it was because he was anti-vax, didn't think Covid was real or didn't get a chance as this was early in the pandemic. It was a recording made from a hospital bed and uploaded to Facebook. As he was saying his goodbyes he said something like "...and tell Brandon (son) I love him, not to trust anyone, and…

> "and no one will ever help you in life" Strange thing to say in a hospital bed? Also, if the doctors know you are dying of Covid you can hardly talk right? Seems fishy.

I can't find the original but here's a person giving a video message while dying of covid. https://youtu.be/nX4d2mxwCS8

Your investigation didn't involve a simple Google search?

Re: Negativity drives online news consumption

#352

Post by bumby »

nradov wrote: post #215
bpm140 wrote: post #186

About a year ago, I stopped consuming news cold turkey (save technology and movie news [the former work-necessary and the latter a personal vice]). I took the extra step of banning Twitter and Memeorandum at the router level, so that I couldn't revert easily. I didn't read a single political news story in the ensuing six months. Some of the happiest months of my life. These days I will read the section headlines on M…

I guess it's one of those game theory things. Individually each of us can improve our lives by "defecting" and ignoring the news. But if we all "cooperate" by consuming a lot of news then we have better odds of voting in ways that actually improve the world. An interesting moral dilemma: is it right to become a low-information voter in order to be happier? (I am not judging your choices. I honestly don't know the cor…

An alternative is to find someone whose thought process you trust who does consume a lot of news and treat them as a human filter. Not too much different than how we use experts in other domains.

Re: Negativity drives online news consumption

#353

Post by t12hrow »

dahart wrote: post #338
t12hrow wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 4chan is usually demonstrably and objectively worse than any mainstream news at sharing important, relevant, and true information. Are you talking about trivial news reporting ("this thing happened today")? If so, yes. If you're talking about important questions in society, no. I mean, if you want full-on propaganda you can read the New York Times or The Atlantic, or Washington Post, etc. Aside from tangible report…

I appreciate the response, but yeah I just don’t buy that 4chan is better on any axis ever, especially for important world news. I see and acknowledge that you lack trust in mainstream news and your government, and there’s probably a longer story there, but I think it’s objectively false to claim you’ll find more truth on 4chan than mainstream news. It might be fair to say that certain subjects will be discussed that…

That's a fair argument, and I can't dispute it. Thinking about this made me reflect a different way to put it. It shouldn't be one vs. the other, but rather, 4chan (and similar forums) are a meta reading of the news and train you to see blind spots or what's not being reported, listen to arguments from both sides of the aisle, and sprinkles a healthy dose of skepticism. After all, most of the discussion revolves around an extract from a maintream newspaper article or mainstream personality, so you're exposed to the "mainstream viewpoint" no matter what.

So the bottomline of what I'm trying to say would be: if you exclusively consume mainstream news, you're probably more vulnerable to adhere to a narrow viewpoint, and maybe not even know there are people who disagree.

Similar to how HN operates when discussing a blog post, especially clickbaity posts -- when reading the comments you may see that there's more to the story or that the author is wrong about something. Sometimes that has helped me get a more nuanced perspective on a specific topic.

Re: Negativity drives online news consumption

#354

Post by ActorNightly »

nonethewiser wrote: post #159
ActorNightly wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its valuable to us because of how our brains work. Learning a piece of info that is bad actually adjust our internal networks more effectively than learning what is good. It works for ML too. If Tesla had a set of training data that was inversed, ie the vast majority of cars were involved in a crash, it would have a fully working level 5 autonomous autopilot 2 years ago. Its much more efficient to have the knowledge…

That’s an interesting take. I’m not sure I fully agree. Lots of things are scary. But not everything that is scary is worth constantly defending against. When the news oversamples or misrepresents then people will orient themselves towards a worse world that doesn’t exist. It leads to unjustified resentment and animosity.

Its not about defense, its about information efficiency. Bad events are rarer, and knowledge about them is more valuable than good events.

Lets say that you had to walk through a minefield with a set number of mines. You could pay me $10 for a piece of information. I can either tell you a spot with a mine, or a spot without one. How do you spend your money?

Re: Negativity drives online news consumption

#355

Post by regpertom »

dahart wrote: post #338
t12hrow wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 4chan is usually demonstrably and objectively worse than any mainstream news at sharing important, relevant, and true information. Are you talking about trivial news reporting ("this thing happened today")? If so, yes. If you're talking about important questions in society, no. I mean, if you want full-on propaganda you can read the New York Times or The Atlantic, or Washington Post, etc. Aside from tangible report…

I appreciate the response, but yeah I just don’t buy that 4chan is better on any axis ever, especially for important world news. I see and acknowledge that you lack trust in mainstream news and your government, and there’s probably a longer story there, but I think it’s objectively false to claim you’ll find more truth on 4chan than mainstream news. It might be fair to say that certain subjects will be discussed that…

Isn’t the pretence important? If I talk to a bunch of people at the pub I’m likely to get various answers, increase the size of the pub and I’ll get to hear all kinds of different stuff and since it’s just people at a pub I can take it or leave it at my will. But when there’s perceived authority involved, a trusted newspaper, maybe a uni lecturer, that kind of thing, then it’s easy to be frustrated that you still have to treat them like people from a pub because they’ve spent considerable effort having me believe they’re better than that. Maybe it’s the difference in expectations between brainstorming and a final review, or a professional and an amateur.

Re: Negativity drives online news consumption

#356

Post by anonymous344 »

News are not news anymore. They are fake headlines just fishing for one more click.

Real News should be government driven. News and not click headlines. And it is in finland and GB, atleast one alternative among the market ones. Don't know about the GB one but in finland the YLE has crazy overgrown budget that just grows and grows, too many people working with too much time and the result is that it's not anymore "government basic information agency for every citizen" but a hundreds of ppl with no real work, but just to make gay, lesbian and lqbqt content on the headlines and everywhere. The amount of unbiblical sickness of sex-related vomiting is just so much that it must be the end of times..

Re: Negativity drives online news consumption

#357

Post by KoftaBob »

wolverine876 wrote: post #339
KoftaBob wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, got any examples?

Sure, but there's no deep secrets. Take away the partisan criticisms and smarter-than-though HN commentary, and there are few surprises (unless you go deep into news coverage). Newspapers are generally best - much more scale and room than TV or other options, and the most well-regarded have reputations for good reasons. (The trick is to ingnore the opinion pages, which are often no better than long HN comments.) * NY…

I appreciate all the sources and context! Will do some digging through these

Re: Negativity drives online news consumption

#358

Post by amjnsx »

gwbrooks wrote: post #10

Former newspaper city editor here. With few exceptions, positive stories -- although readers clamored for them in surveys -- never drove newsrack sales the way negative stories did. That's why we had a whole section for feel-good features but they didn't usually get prime front-page real estate. In the age of infinite content, headlines have become a sort of drama arms race. But the basic dynamic of what works and wh…

My theory is that people want to read about things that make themselves feel better.

Bad news usually does that - in that it helps us reflect that “well at least i’m not THAT guy!”

Re: Negativity drives online news consumption

#359

Post by postsantum »

paulmd wrote: post #151
claytongulick wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

State sponsored media generally hasn't worked out too well.

BBC is one of the best news sources around. For a long time, Al Jazeera was great on anything that didn't directly impact Qatari domestic politics. PBS is pretty fantastic overall and serves a lot of niches that aren't served by commercialized media and really shouldn't be . Like yes if you set out to make a state-sponsored propaganda agency then that's what you get (see: Voice of America, etc), but state sponsorship…

> BBC is one of the best news sources around.

I hope it's a joke. No one could say this with a straight face

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-64855760

Re: Negativity drives online news consumption

#360

Post by dirtybird04 »

wolverine876 wrote: post #347
dirtybird04 wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ‘The Wire’ Star Lance Reddick Dead at 60 > My Struggle Session at Stanford Law School > Two gifts to Trump family from foreign nations are missing, report says > Michigan Is Becoming The Anti-Florida On LGBTQ Rights ― And A Lot More > Biden jokes he's ‘really not Irish’ because he's sober, doesn't have relatives ‘in jail’ > Just Because ChatBots Can't Think Doesn't Mean They Can't Lie > Derek Chauvin, ex-officer co…

Sure, there are some things that won't apply to you, but there are many that do. Also, why limit the scope of importance to state and local - it seems arbitrary. Things all over the world affect you. Look at climate change, as an easy example. (Also, the Antifa trial is in San Diego.) > pure sensationalism Political censorship in elite law schools, corruption by your President, AI dangers, justice, political oppressi…

You sound like a hoot to be around. Hope you find some peace within yourself and stop telling others how to live their lives.
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