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7% of Americans don’t use the internet. Who are they?

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Re: 7% of Americans don’t use the internet. Who are they?

#381

Post by ClumsyPilot »

slg wrote: post #380
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The society would be mich better off. I find your equation of "news is like voting" appauling. News has almost no informational value like covering Russel Brand when he was running around telling people not to vote. We need more people voting and speaking to their representatives, and fewer people outraged about something some random brainless celebtrity said.

Why are so many people in this thread equating news with celebrity or outrage culture? News is about learning and understanding current events. If you don't understand current events, you can't be an educated voter. If you have a societal obligation to vote, you have a societal obligation to follow the news at the very least whenever there is an election in your area and those occur much more frequently than once eve…

People equate news with celebrities and outrage because that's what 80% of airtime is dedicated to.

If you want to be educated voter, pick any journal or periodical like The Economist or The New European. Their journalism will actually cover an issue in some depth, from whatever is their biased perspective.

Re: 7% of Americans don’t use the internet. Who are they?

#382

Post by slg »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #381
slg wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are so many people in this thread equating news with celebrity or outrage culture? News is about learning and understanding current events. If you don't understand current events, you can't be an educated voter. If you have a societal obligation to vote, you have a societal obligation to follow the news at the very least whenever there is an election in your area and those occur much more frequently than once eve…

People equate news with celebrities and outrage because that's what 80% of airtime is dedicated to. If you want to be educated voter, pick any journal or periodical like The Economist or The New European. Their journalism will actually cover an issue in some depth, from whatever is their biased perspective.

> pick any journal or periodical like The Economist or The New European

But those are news too. Why are we judging news based off the worst examples? If you have a problem with the news you are consuming, find some other source. Don't write off all news consumption as bad.

Re: 7% of Americans don’t use the internet. Who are they?

#383

Post by [deleted] »

hinkley wrote: post #215
xkeysc0re wrote: post #20

Honestly, I wish I could stop using the internet. I make a lot of things and enjoy sharing them because other people might find them useful. It has often led to wonderful and inspiring conversations. Yet it's obvious there's something very very wrong happening with American culture that began around the time of social media platform consolidation. "Being online" entails a distinct mindset and attitude that is incompa…

I’ve been trying to put The Internet back into the role of Tool, but even that is a challenge because for so many topics the search engines are overrun by SEO hack sites. If the page rank of StackOverflow weren’t so overwhelming I’d probably struggle with work related searches too. Even there, a few times a week I end up in someone’s link farm.

[deleted]

Re: 7% of Americans don’t use the internet. Who are they?

#384

Post by smolder »

hinkley wrote: post #215
xkeysc0re wrote: post #20

Honestly, I wish I could stop using the internet. I make a lot of things and enjoy sharing them because other people might find them useful. It has often led to wonderful and inspiring conversations. Yet it's obvious there's something very very wrong happening with American culture that began around the time of social media platform consolidation. "Being online" entails a distinct mindset and attitude that is incompa…

I’ve been trying to put The Internet back into the role of Tool, but even that is a challenge because for so many topics the search engines are overrun by SEO hack sites. If the page rank of StackOverflow weren’t so overwhelming I’d probably struggle with work related searches too. Even there, a few times a week I end up in someone’s link farm.

We don't need a whole new internet but I often think we need a new web or at least a whitelist of non-shit web we can search on.

Re: 7% of Americans don’t use the internet. Who are they?

#385

Post by boring_twenties »

Sebb767 wrote: post #22
boring_twenties wrote: post #2

I've been using the Internet since 1992-3. Lately I'm feeling more and more like these 7% have the right idea.

I don't think you can generalize the internet to be bad. That's like saying processed food is bad: Yes, we would not have the obesity problems we have now without them, but neither would we have been able to build our civilization as is or be able to be as well nourished as we are. The direction the net is currently going looks a bit worrying, I definitely agree. But I would not want to miss all the awesome advantage…

Luckily I don't need to generalize the Internet to be good or bad, I only need to determine whether the good it brings to my life personally outweighs the bad.

I don't have an exact answer to that, but what I do know for sure is that the good has been on a downward trajectory, and the bad on an even steeper upward one, for years. Even if they haven't actually crossed yet, it seems only a matter of time before they will.

Re: 7% of Americans don’t use the internet. Who are they?

#386

Post by heavyset_go »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #381
slg wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are so many people in this thread equating news with celebrity or outrage culture? News is about learning and understanding current events. If you don't understand current events, you can't be an educated voter. If you have a societal obligation to vote, you have a societal obligation to follow the news at the very least whenever there is an election in your area and those occur much more frequently than once eve…

People equate news with celebrities and outrage because that's what 80% of airtime is dedicated to. If you want to be educated voter, pick any journal or periodical like The Economist or The New European. Their journalism will actually cover an issue in some depth, from whatever is their biased perspective.

Weird, I watch PBS and the News Hour, and I can't remember the last time in the past 5 years that I heard about celebrities or "outrage" on my TV.

Re: 7% of Americans don’t use the internet. Who are they?

#388

Post by heavyset_go »

tw04 wrote: post #292
lmm wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you try just... not following the outrage parts? Not getting outraged? If you want to spend more time connecting with people you care about, getting rid of facebook feels like throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

I have a facebook account I rarely if ever login to unless it's something school related. When I do, without fail I see someone I would otherwise get along with posting some ridiculous, easily disproven nonsense about insert scaremongering of the day . Every now and again I'll respond with a link to a factcheck which inevitably upsets the person who is angry someone isn't reinforcing the echo chamber. Then I promptly…

> I truly believe if Zuck had the option of nuking a third world country to make another billion or solve world peace and Facebook goes away entirely, he'd nuke the country without a second thought.

You should check these articles out, they were written in 2018[1][2] and then in 2020[3].

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebo...

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/06/technology/myanmar-facebo...

[3] https://time.com/5880118/myanmar-rohingya-genocide-facebook-...

Re: 7% of Americans don’t use the internet. Who are they?

#389

Post by busterarm »

agumonkey wrote: post #377
busterarm wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all, I am calm. Second of all, there's nothing crazy about what I said. By their own admission they've designed the apps to be addictive. Would you tell your friends "go ahead, shoot up. have a great time!"? Would you tell your family? What I think is crazy is that we tolerate companies that make products like this. I guess greed is a powerful force.

Yes it's been shown that they're tricking people into addiction. I wasn't responding to the arguments more about the 'every ounce of hostility'. Their marketing strategies are sad[0], but you seemed to be all-in in a war against them which I think is misguided. Sorry if crazy was too strong of a word, I didn't meant it as a personal insult. I believe hostility and reaction is the wrong tool for this issue.. let's sim…

Isn't it because of the effects we've seen from nicotine and alcohol that we should be so vigilant about mainstreaming new vices in society?

Re: 7% of Americans don’t use the internet. Who are they?

#390

Post by tclancy »

toss1 wrote: post #372
tclancy wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't work that way. I pruned both Twitter and Facebook intentionally in the way you suggest and it became pretty clear (or maybe it's my biases) that both run on outrage. Facebook would insist on bringing arguments to the top of my feed as best it could. As an example, I am friends with a regional sportswriter on FB and he had a post asking something sports/ politics related. It generated about 50 responses, so…

IDK about FB, I always avoided it like a toxic plague. But on Twitter, there seem to still be work-arounds. I use lists set to Private, curated for specific experts on particular topics, and many top and/or obscure experts post regularly. This provides a reasonably straightforward chronological feed, curated to my interest, with well-tuned news and links to key analysis. Just NEVER use the main Home feed (which they…

I don't know what to say to stuff like this. I spent a ton of time treating Twitter the same way and in no way do I want to suggest that I am now enlightened or something, but when you hear people (and I include my past self in this) talk about Twitter, it's like they're talking about a really effective chainsaw where there's no guard and the handle is on the wrong end. You can use it to cut down trees if you figure out how, but 99% of people harm themselves in the process.
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