[0x8BADF00D]

> I can't take them too seriously until I see an alternative that does the work of collective discovery.

There is an alternative. It is you and I. The citizen journalist will become the arbiter of truth tomorrow. And that arbitration will be decided on rationality. There will be no more credentialism and gatekeeping. That is why the traditional media companies are scared shitless.

[shuntress]

Aha! Yes!!

The most obvious first step is to form a leadership group to manage coordination. Different people to be in charge of printing/hosting and distribution, payroll, HR, research, etc, etc.

[stale2002]

No, we don't need any of that.

If someone wants to publish news, they don't need those things. Just publish it.

[0x8BADF00D]

Sure. Except it’s decentralized.

[wwright]

And the citizen engineers will solve P = NP, and the citizen doctors will cure cancer, and the citizen citizen political scientists will create a perfect voting system…

[api]

> There is an alternative. It is you and I.

How do I tell the difference between an honest citizen journalist, a propagandist, a liar, a lunatic, or a troll?

Conventional journalism of course is not perfectly trustworthy, but at least there is some penalty for extreme untrustworthiness in the form of loss of reputation of the paper and its brand. The NYT is an illustrative case. My opinion of that paper dropped significantly after its role in providing only the most softball criticism of the (then impending) Iraq invasion. I'm not the only person I've heard say this. NYT paid a price for cheerleading for that disaster.

[banads]

>How do I tell the difference between an honest citizen journalist, a propagandist, a liar, a lunatic, or a troll?

Critical thinking skills, independent research, and open dialogue

[thu2111]

I'm not sure there's a penalty. NYT subscriptions have been going up, not down, despite it frequently reporting things that are bizarre or factually wrong. Same is true for many other papers.

That makes sense: people often buy newspapers for the analysis that reconfirms their own world views, and gives them intellectual ammo for their pre-conceived notions.

With citizen journalists (a.k.a. bloggers) they start out with no pre-existing reputation so tend to depend on other ways to quickly build credibility, like using lots of hyperlinks to sources so you can check their claims, or leaving comments open so commenters can criticise and respond. Even today in 2020 it's standard for news articles to provide no citations or hyperlinks at all, even when e.g. the entire report is about a research paper, and often comment sections are now closed. Exactly because so many commenters would often point out flaws in the articles!