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Emotional headlines have an impact regardless of the credibility of the source

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Re: Emotional headlines have an impact regardless of the credibility of the source

#81

Post by octoberfranklin »

ReactiveJelly wrote: post #56
frongpik wrote: post #39

That's a big reason what makes HN successful: a blanket ban on emotional content. Edit. I've been thinking of an idea that for us knowledge sharing resembles neuron connections, based on my limited knowledge of that topic. Each of us watches a few channels of information and makes a choice to forward/retweet a piece of information so your subscribers would see it, ignore it or block a channel if it sends you bogus da…

Like a web of trust, but for link recommendations? Maybe it could work by changing the incentives. If you had a magical perfect AI that was loyal to you and ran on your PC, it would always act in your interest - Spidering the web and returning interesting things based on your feedback. Whereas the current model is, none of this stuff is self-hosted, it has to run on Somebody Else's Computer. SEC costs money to run, s…

> Like a web of trust, but for link recommendations?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25405128

Re: Emotional headlines have an impact regardless of the credibility of the source

#82

Post by baby »

ryandrake wrote: post #70
baby wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is what we need: plugins that protect users. Allow users to vote against webpages that are too “sensational” or something.

You can't crowdsource good taste. All you'll end up with is popular content gets upvoted and unpopular content doesn't. Every voting system open to the masses ends up this way. So many problems on the Internet stem from people confusing popularity with quality.

What about wikipedia?

Re: Emotional headlines have an impact regardless of the credibility of the source

#83

Post by porpoise »

frongpik wrote: post #39

That's a big reason what makes HN successful: a blanket ban on emotional content. Edit. I've been thinking of an idea that for us knowledge sharing resembles neuron connections, based on my limited knowledge of that topic. Each of us watches a few channels of information and makes a choice to forward/retweet a piece of information so your subscribers would see it, ignore it or block a channel if it sends you bogus da…

HN has a ton of emotional content. But it really depends on the topic/thread. For example, I clicked into a thread recently where I found that at least 80% of users commenting have been blocked by myself for posting that type of content, and this is what I literally see:

https://imgur.com/a/nGFvx08

(I use a script so users can be blocked with one click)

Whereas in this thread, it's only about 1% (1 blocked in 73 comments).

Despite me having a huge block list, I'm consistently amazed how often I'd click into a huge thread with hundreds of comments and find that I've blocked not even a single user.

Re: Emotional headlines have an impact regardless of the credibility of the source

#84

Post by TeMPOraL »

qsort wrote: post #15
nitrogen wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consumers frequently lie that they prefer honest headlines No. "Revealed preference" is exploitation of vice, plain and simple. Addicts might honestly say they would prefer to abstain, but still relapse. The same dopamine systems are being exploited in either case.

That's a distinction without a difference. An addict who says they prefer to abstain but doesn't, doesn't actually prefer to abstain. Where preferences come from is irrelevant. De gustibus non disputandum est.

No. Revealed preferences are manipulative bullshit. Calling choices forced by external conditions (whether it's your own addiction, manipulative headlines or strong market pressure) choices is just a way to whitewash deeply immoral manipulation, and justify selfishness as serving others what they "want".

Re: Emotional headlines have an impact regardless of the credibility of the source

#85

Post by noir_lord »

jackvalentine wrote: post #59
crmd wrote: post #13

The only solution is not to engage with emotionally manipulative content. Even, for example, with nerdy YouTube channels that I love, if a video shows up in my feed: * with a title $villain $unflattering_third_person_present_verb $something * with the format $hero $flattering_third_person_present_verb $something * a person in the thumbnail making an o-face[1] for any reason Then I simply don’t click on it. [1] https:…

I love this extension for making YouTube less horrible. It removes the thumbnails and returns to 'frame from the video'. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/clickbait-rem...

That's lovely, Thank you for the link.

Re: Emotional headlines have an impact regardless of the credibility of the source

#86

Post by rtx »

thelittleone wrote: post #74
crmd wrote: post #13

The only solution is not to engage with emotionally manipulative content. Even, for example, with nerdy YouTube channels that I love, if a video shows up in my feed: * with a title $villain $unflattering_third_person_present_verb $something * with the format $hero $flattering_third_person_present_verb $something * a person in the thumbnail making an o-face[1] for any reason Then I simply don’t click on it. [1] https:…

Australia news sites favorite words: "terrifying", "chilling", "tragic", "sinister", "slammed". It's almost as if there's an editor imposed target / quota for excessively emotional words on the first page.

Slammed, I dont know why but it triggers me.

Re: Emotional headlines have an impact regardless of the credibility of the source

#87

Post by rtx »

graycat wrote: post #34
MaxBarraclough wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a pity that there's really no social norm to penalise sharing non-credible information/misinformation.

> penalize??? Due to bad content, I flatly refuse to go to Web sites of ABC, ..., WaPo. E.g., if there is a post at Hacker News from the NYT, ===>> NO WAY will I go there. Same for The Guardian, the BBC, etc. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Bad media has fooled me way, WAY too often, and I will NOT go back. I just conclude, bluntly, fooling people is all they know how to do. But they aren't fo…

These businesses are being fooled by analytics platforms. Their collapse would be so sudden that employees would be learning to code.

Re: Emotional headlines have an impact regardless of the credibility of the source

#88

Post by forgingahead »

justin66 wrote: post #72
forgingahead wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best thing then is to ignore/block print media as well. Legacy media institutions have destroyed their credibility because of this race to the bottom - for a brief moment in history, there was a nice thought that the subscription revenue model would allow more fair and balanced reporting compared to the ad-revenue models (since they wouldn't need clickbait headlines/stories). Turns out that people don't want to p…

You’ll have to put some effort into evaluating the media you use, whether or not you believe freelancers are better equipped to be effective. > those of us who really would like to know what is going on have no clue what is true or not any longer. Well yeah, if this is your policy: > The best thing then is to ignore/block print media as well You’re not going to have any idea what is going on. A vigorous application o…

Respectfully disagree - you don't "put effort into evaluating" food from a restaurant that has continually served you dodgy food. You either go elsewhere that doesn't serve you poisoned items (alternatives), or boycott eating out all together if such alternatives don't exist.

The belief is that the general media teaches you useful information from current events that impact your life. It doesn't. I'd rather read a "year in review", or something on a longer time frame, than follow things too closely.

For specialised knowledge, there are professional journals for that sort of thing. But mass media "news" is not useful at all, so I've taken the policy of cutting it out. Mental health and general life perspectives have been vastly improved.

Re: Emotional headlines have an impact regardless of the credibility of the source

#89

Post by justin66 »

forgingahead wrote: post #88
justin66 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’ll have to put some effort into evaluating the media you use, whether or not you believe freelancers are better equipped to be effective. > those of us who really would like to know what is going on have no clue what is true or not any longer. Well yeah, if this is your policy: > The best thing then is to ignore/block print media as well You’re not going to have any idea what is going on. A vigorous application o…

Respectfully disagree - you don't "put effort into evaluating" food from a restaurant that has continually served you dodgy food. You either go elsewhere that doesn't serve you poisoned items (alternatives), or boycott eating out all together if such alternatives don't exist. The belief is that the general media teaches you useful information from current events that impact your life. It doesn't. I'd rather read a "y…

> Respectfully disagree - you don't "put effort into evaluating" food from a restaurant that has continually served you dodgy food.

I think this is perhaps a poor analogy, but is illustrative of the real disagreement. There’s no informational equivalent to a restaurant that is so trustworthy that you no longer need give a moment’s thought to the safety of the food prepared there. That’s not to say there aren’t great newspapers or magazines or individual writers, but if you think you’ve found one whose entire output should be trusted unconditionally, I’d really want to discuss some of their lesser works with you as counterexamples.

> I'd rather read a "year in review", or something on a longer time frame, than follow things too closely.

This seems like a mentally healthy way to learn about world events, and I don’t disapprove. What you read will be produced by the same journalists, though, right?

I avoid television news almost entirely when I can and I suspect our point of view on this might not be very far apart. I do think the ability to parse corrupt - or hopefully, merely imperfect - media is an important skill for people to have.

Re: Emotional headlines have an impact regardless of the credibility of the source

#90

Post by freeflight »

nine_k wrote: post #79
freeflight wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if just reading the headline is already having an emotional impact, as the source claims, then even that method won't change much as you will still be exposed to the title. Which presents kind of an difficult problem: You won't know if an headline is emotional without actually reading it, but once you read it, and it turns out to be emotional, you will already be affected.

Developing the faculty to emotionally detach from things you read or see, and stay level-headed, is useful across one's entire life. Doctors, first responders, and other people who face extreme situations develop it to be able to do their jobs. But it's not out of reach for a person who just practices it consciously. This is not about removing your emotions, it's about letting your mind observe the flow of emotions,…

As somebody working in palliative care I'm well aware about facing emotionally extreme situations, it's something HCWs, first responders and other social job fields, have been struggling with for as long as these occupations have existed.

That's also exactly why these sectors suffer from way above average depression rates, even tho most of them have the training, knowledge and, ideally, access facilities that should help them deal with it better.

But it's not simple as you make it out to be: Humans are emotional beings, whether we like that or not, it's not something we can "train away" or just turn off on demand, it's part of what makes us humans.

What training helps with is staying clear and sober in the moment where it counts, but that does not negate the long-term impact of regularly being exposed to such situations and the emotional toll they excerpt; It adds up, and creeps back up in the most irrelevant contexts.

To bring it back to the topic: When participants rationally knew the source and thus most likely the claim to not to be credible, even with that rational knowledge, the headline still ended up having an emotional impact on them.

Which will very likely add up over time just as it does with social jobs, but trying to evade that impact seems impossible: There is no way to know if a headline is emotional until actually reading and parsing it, but by that point it's apparently already too late.

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