Shameless plug, but this is something we are working on right now.
Social media is a terrible medium for news. Aside from the ability for anyone to post anything, which can easily lead to misinformation, it also sets up the absolute worst incentives. If news organizations are expected to share their reporting for free, and only be able to monetize when someone clicks through to their page -- you end up with clickbait.
It also means that virtually all local news is silenced. Almost by definition, local news appeals to a narrow audience, which doesn't lead to the scale social algorithms favor.
We're trying to take the convenience and brevity of social news updates, but use them to build a new platform that helps reporters and surface trustworthy, local news. We make tools for newsrooms that then syndicates out to the consumer platform, before an article or video is ever even made. (We are to news what OpenTable is to restaurants.) And through rev-shares, our partners succeed when we do.
Please make it clear earlier its US specific. If I go to waitlist, it asks for my ZIP code, showing greyed out 12345, nor does it allow me to select any country. 12345 isn't the format we use here. Kind of an odd way to say 'we don't serve your kind here'.
That being said, I heard in a local podcast about an initiative for local news platform, but more to get directly reporters to get paid instead of a middle man as newspaper (the platform just allowed to select your city, and they had themselves very low margins). Margins for local news are already really thin due to lack of amount of potential interest. Some is even state sponsored. Its a tough market for sure. I forgot the name of the platform (it was partially still being build ie. only a number of pilot cities), which is kind of telling, I guess.
> It also means that virtually all local news is silenced
Every time I visit a local news page, it's 10% content advertised by the headline, and 90% popups, clickbait, and "ads" like, "Drivers over 55 without a DUI are in for a surprise this November!" with a picture of the Centrum Silver guy with a handful of cash.
I tried registering for updates but got a Cloudflare 502. HN "hug of death"?
Once it's sorted out, I'll give it another shot. Quick request: can you please add more details to a faq or something? eg. how much it'll cost for us users, will there be a desktop interface, etc.
How does this help with information overload? It looks like a new channel of information to add to the existing flows. What am I missing?
If it's reporters notes (like the site says) it means what consumers get isn't distilled into the flow of a story that informs. That is left up to people who consume to do and to do that they need to get all the details. Sounds overwhelming to me. Or, am I missing something?
I’ve always found the news from my trusted sources to be reasonable and accurate until it covers something I know about. Then it seems like a complete mess.
Humans tend to trust the first thing they hear and we tend to be less skeptical about news media especially if they seem very confident or persuasive.
> He used this term to describe the phenomenon of experts believing news articles on topics outside of their fields of expertise, even after acknowledging that articles written in the same publication that are within the experts' fields of expertise are error-ridden and full of misunderstanding
I've always felt that instead of J School, journalists should have majors in topics they are covering and a minor in journalism. When I was in college and worked for the school newspaper I tried hammering this to people, but all the journalism/media professors felt it was a bad idea, probably because it is such a threat to their profession.
I'm really conflicted over this article because it makes some really good points but is missing the forest through the trees.
Information overload is very real, and people are very prone to making mistakes when digesting information from social media.
The answer isn't to kill social media or force users to solve CAPTCHAS before posting. It's to improve those critical rationality skills and the ability to analyze information.
Social media algorithms are harmful, but they're ultimately dumb likelihood solutions that do naive grouping - it just turns out that more partisan/outrageous content tends to be more exciting and elicit more key value actions.
The fix isn't to try and play legal games with social media providers, but to teach users how the mousetrap works and what are the levers they can control (and the ones they can't).
> It's to improve those critical rationality skills and the ability to analyze information
You're assuming the majority of people are bamboozled by bias and propaganda, and if they were better educated they'd be immune.
But it's just as likely that they'll continue to believe what suits them regardless of rationality training. Assessing sources and analyzing information is hard work. So is thinking, and it's especially difficult if the results go against the beliefs of your social group.
I'm not convinced that critical thinking skills will make the slightest bit of difference to the vast majority of people .
> The fix isn't to try and play legal games with social media providers, but to teach users how the mousetrap works and what are the levers they can control (and the ones they can't).
In other words, empower people.
I agree but this is part of the struggle. All the con artists tell you they want you to be empowered to make the correct decisions yourself and the other guy is a con artist who bullshits you into thinking he is trying to empower you.
Average person in developed countries spend more than few hours consuming media every day even more so in the US. Why do we think this is sustainable?
I have always wondered the second order effect of binging so much media and it kind of shows these days with people being dumbfounded/superficial and making connections where none exists.
I think one of the root causes of this is the increasingly partisan behavior of the "mainstream" media. People are sick of having their opinions dictated to them, they're sick of media outlets that all push the same narratives 24/7 (Russiagate, anyone?), and they're desperately searching for any outlet that will objectively report "all the news that's fit to print" (as the NY Times likes to say).
In the past year we saw Andrew Sullivan leave New York Magazine[1], Bari Weiss leave The New York Times[2], Matthew Yglesias leave Vox (which he founded) [3], and Glenn Greenwald leave The Intercept (which he founded) [4]. All of them had one thing in common that Greenwald summed up well: "The same trends of repression, censorship and ideological homogeneity plaguing the national press generally have engulfed the media outlet I co-founded, culminating in censorship of my own articles."
The mainstream media has created an information vacuum, and the spread of disinformation is a direct result of that.
I think it is more complex than that. With social media and the internet people found a virtual friend that always approves their world view. And should something happen that doesn't fit the world view a cozy way out is just google search around the corner.
And of course: the world is confusing and complex. Stuff that was previously something only crazy people would believe turned out to be true (think Snowden). Given such a world isn't it easier to just form some idea in thin air and worship it instead of admitting that you have no clue what is going on? This is what is happening here.
And social media is the perfect echo chamber to avoid the cognitive dissonance one would get when the rubber meets the road in terms of an reality check. If there are millions others that share your world view how wrong can you be?
Media isn't innocent in that sense, politics isn't innocent, social media companies and marketing people aren't innocent. They are all complicit in this. But saying something among the lines of "people go to apeshit conspiracy nonsense sites because they don't trust the media" would be a bit far fetched as well.
I think the main reason people do it is because A) they can and B) it feels better than not doing it.
The classical media is certainly part of that feeling, but certainly not the biggest part of it.
If you're referring to Russia actively interfering with American elections through a pointed and state sponsored disinformation campaign that continues to this day... then that's not a narrative? That's a thing that's happening that matters and is one of the principle sources of bad actors behind this very article
I feel like anyone railing against "mainstream" media hasn't been paying attention for the past decade. Facebook, Reddit, etc. each command more daily eyeballs than any cable news network, and yet somehow they're not mainstream? Social networks are the overwhelming bulk of the media apparatus these days.
Substack is a great development. Mostly news consumers seem to be drifting to much worse and even more partisan news "sources" if they leave the mainstream media.
I don't know if Bari Weiss can be part of this. Bari Weiss had apparently been slamming her co workers in public during a company-wide meeting. If I knew my co worker was publicly insulting me on twitter while we were in a meeting together I would also call for my co worker to no longer be my co worker for contributing to a hostile workplace.
Most information, also in scientific publications, is full with logical fallacies and other inconsistencies. This again causes people to jump to conclusions on the basis of limited information/evidence.
I tried to give a guideline on how to do critical thinking and how to investigate the truth about something.
The first steps are: 1) logical fallacies 2) the scientific method .. And I think that these should be part of basic education.
Then we have 4) possible fraud/crime 5) bias 6) Unknowns. Which help to understand the limits or problems with different conclusions.
And 7) solutions. is how to work towards a common acceptable solution
This constant pushing of stories about Fake News and Misinformation makes it really feel like there's a concerted effort to alter public opinion on censorship and free speech.
So, you are rejecting the premise that a lot of misinformation is spread and it has much wider reach than in the past?
I would say it has, and I consider only reasonable that there is a desire to understand the mechanisms behind it. I would consider the effects net negative. No need to a concerted effort.
For most of the past decade, news companies demanded preferential treatment on social media and search. They wanted to be seen first and prominently. I guess that wasn't enough for them. Looks like in the 2020s, they are going to demand exclusive presence. They want nobody else to have a voice. Nobody else to have a say. Ultimatley, only traditional media gets to spread misinformation.
Makes me feel like people are just fed up with all the bullshit that's out there. A lot of people who feel like misinformation is a problem we can make progress on don't think censorship is the solution. It's a hard problem, and it's an unsolved one. Griping about it increases the pressure on people to find solutions.
Constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley warned about Stengel’s appointment in a column Tuesday: “It would be difficult to select a more anti-free speech figure to address government media policy, one has to assume that Biden will continue the onslaught against this core freedom as president.”
He noted that Biden himself had publicly advocated restrictions on speech during the campaign: “Biden called for greater speech controls on the Internet and denounced Twitter for allowing others to speak freely.”
One side of the political aisle rallies against social media for censoring their posts while the other side says social media don't censor enough. I feel there is a simmering battle over a lot of our constitutionally protected rights which is about to reach a crescendo depending on what the Biden administration does in the next few years.
If I may paraphrase you, "it feels (without evidence) like there's a giant conspiracy across many organizations involving hundreds or thousands of people acting in coordination, this implies an unknown secret powerful central propaganda ministry that hatches plans to further upcoming moves".
I agree with the sentiment solely because most sides of the political spectrum are doing the same. Donald trump rose to the fame with calling everything fake news. Somehow everyone now believes there is fake news so they don't trust outside their own echo chambers which is called fake news by someone else.
I think it's media hacking another vulnerable parts of human beings. I see attempts to censor and attempts to fake being censored in order to hijack different vulnerabilities.
I sympathize with people who want to see a technological basis for this, I really do. I just don't buy it. We just saw a press conference an hour ago by the executive office of the most powerful nation in the world allege with a straight face that the recent election was tainted by Canadian election machines running malicious software written by Venezuela, Cuba, "likely" China, and directed by George Soros and (from the grave -- I swear I'm not making this up) Hugo Chavez. And obviously evidence was provided for none of this.
People are going to believe that. LOTS of people are going to believe that. And it's not because of "information overload". It's just a lie. It's a lie that (1) is tempting for people to believe and (2) that someone is willing to tell.
The internet didn't make our brains more susceptible to fake news. It just made our leaders (some of them) more able to get away with lies.
The world is complicated and very difficult to understand. Worst, most people have no motivation whatsoever to even try... and it's not just about politics or social policies. I wonder if we would be better off by building incentives for people to qualify themselves during their entire lifetime or at least for as long as they have a right to vote.
I think we need some system resembling double-entry book-keeping. Government should do something (actually do a lot) to prevent the spread of fake news, it should label them as such. But somebody must also control what the government is doing.
Corporations have solved the problem of needing accurate information with the system of double-entry book-keeping and also with the idea that finances are managed by two parties the "Controller" and the "Treasurer" who are each watching each other.
This article is interesting, I see the echo chambers of all ideologies.
I have the time to look at both sides of a given issue and do not fall on either side of any political or social group.
I attempt to post moderate reasonable ideas that are well vetted. But this gets me called a fence sitter.
But what is scarier, in my opinion, is the idea of censorship. I would rather wad through crap than see anything censored, aside from clear incitement to commit violence.
The current largest reasons for the spread of "fake news" are:
1) Fox network profits from doing so
2) Facebook Corp. profits from doing so
Neither of those two reasons are "information overload".
You know how every once in a while, some email spam network gets shut down and all of a sudden, the global email spam volume gets cut in half? Just from one network? That's what would happen if Facebook and Fox were shut down.
I think here's a good suggestion from the article:
"... make it more difficult to create and share low-quality information. This could involve adding friction by forcing people to pay to share or receive information. Payment could be in the form of time"
This could mean a simple rule such as: "You can only post once a day (for free)"
The article seems to be all over the place and mixes interesting phenomena like human biases and fallacies with pure speculation, like claiming "bots can easily ruin social networks" which they infer from merely running simulations. Obviously their simulation doesn't prove anything about the nature of networks of real humans (as one example).
Afaik their Botometer tool is also highly disputed, supposedly having way too many false positives.
They also use supposed "independent fact checkers" for reference, when those "independent fact checkers" on Facebook and Twitter are decidedly left leaning. This in turn casts doubt on their conclusions on the differences between Democrats and Republicans (for example something like Republicans are more likely to believe fake news as verified by independent fact checkers - or maybe left leaning fact checkers are more likely to label "conservative news" as fake news).
Ironically, the whole article is too long to comment on it all, kind of supporting the title of it (information overload helps spread fake news).
I find it very concerning how people start to overly rely on "studies". It really needs to become common knowledge that a "study of this" or a "study of that" really doesn't prove anything just yet. Those studies need to be scrutinized and verified and replicated, and properly interpreted.
[+] [-] nillium|5 years ago|reply
Social media is a terrible medium for news. Aside from the ability for anyone to post anything, which can easily lead to misinformation, it also sets up the absolute worst incentives. If news organizations are expected to share their reporting for free, and only be able to monetize when someone clicks through to their page -- you end up with clickbait.
It also means that virtually all local news is silenced. Almost by definition, local news appeals to a narrow audience, which doesn't lead to the scale social algorithms favor.
We're trying to take the convenience and brevity of social news updates, but use them to build a new platform that helps reporters and surface trustworthy, local news. We make tools for newsrooms that then syndicates out to the consumer platform, before an article or video is ever even made. (We are to news what OpenTable is to restaurants.) And through rev-shares, our partners succeed when we do.
https://www.forthapp.com is our consumer side, https://www.nillium.com/newsrooms for the newsroom SaaS.
[+] [-] Fnoord|5 years ago|reply
That being said, I heard in a local podcast about an initiative for local news platform, but more to get directly reporters to get paid instead of a middle man as newspaper (the platform just allowed to select your city, and they had themselves very low margins). Margins for local news are already really thin due to lack of amount of potential interest. Some is even state sponsored. Its a tough market for sure. I forgot the name of the platform (it was partially still being build ie. only a number of pilot cities), which is kind of telling, I guess.
[+] [-] cjohnson318|5 years ago|reply
Every time I visit a local news page, it's 10% content advertised by the headline, and 90% popups, clickbait, and "ads" like, "Drivers over 55 without a DUI are in for a surprise this November!" with a picture of the Centrum Silver guy with a handful of cash.
[+] [-] garraeth|5 years ago|reply
I tried registering for updates but got a Cloudflare 502. HN "hug of death"?
Once it's sorted out, I'll give it another shot. Quick request: can you please add more details to a faq or something? eg. how much it'll cost for us users, will there be a desktop interface, etc.
Thanks!
[+] [-] mfer|5 years ago|reply
If it's reporters notes (like the site says) it means what consumers get isn't distilled into the flow of a story that informs. That is left up to people who consume to do and to do that they need to get all the details. Sounds overwhelming to me. Or, am I missing something?
[+] [-] goalieca|5 years ago|reply
Humans tend to trust the first thing they hear and we tend to be less skeptical about news media especially if they seem very confident or persuasive.
[+] [-] forest_dweller|5 years ago|reply
> He used this term to describe the phenomenon of experts believing news articles on topics outside of their fields of expertise, even after acknowledging that articles written in the same publication that are within the experts' fields of expertise are error-ridden and full of misunderstanding
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#GellMannAmnes...
[+] [-] beefield|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] partiallypro|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vorpalhex|5 years ago|reply
Information overload is very real, and people are very prone to making mistakes when digesting information from social media.
The answer isn't to kill social media or force users to solve CAPTCHAS before posting. It's to improve those critical rationality skills and the ability to analyze information.
Social media algorithms are harmful, but they're ultimately dumb likelihood solutions that do naive grouping - it just turns out that more partisan/outrageous content tends to be more exciting and elicit more key value actions.
The fix isn't to try and play legal games with social media providers, but to teach users how the mousetrap works and what are the levers they can control (and the ones they can't).
[+] [-] Veen|5 years ago|reply
You're assuming the majority of people are bamboozled by bias and propaganda, and if they were better educated they'd be immune.
But it's just as likely that they'll continue to believe what suits them regardless of rationality training. Assessing sources and analyzing information is hard work. So is thinking, and it's especially difficult if the results go against the beliefs of your social group.
I'm not convinced that critical thinking skills will make the slightest bit of difference to the vast majority of people .
[+] [-] chordalkeyboard|5 years ago|reply
In other words, empower people.
I agree but this is part of the struggle. All the con artists tell you they want you to be empowered to make the correct decisions yourself and the other guy is a con artist who bullshits you into thinking he is trying to empower you.
[+] [-] agentdrtran|5 years ago|reply
You can not apply personal solutions to systemic problems.
[+] [-] damnencryption|5 years ago|reply
I have always wondered the second order effect of binging so much media and it kind of shows these days with people being dumbfounded/superficial and making connections where none exists.
[+] [-] Nacdor|5 years ago|reply
In the past year we saw Andrew Sullivan leave New York Magazine[1], Bari Weiss leave The New York Times[2], Matthew Yglesias leave Vox (which he founded) [3], and Glenn Greenwald leave The Intercept (which he founded) [4]. All of them had one thing in common that Greenwald summed up well: "The same trends of repression, censorship and ideological homogeneity plaguing the national press generally have engulfed the media outlet I co-founded, culminating in censorship of my own articles."
The mainstream media has created an information vacuum, and the spread of disinformation is a direct result of that.
[1] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/07/andrew-sullivan-see-...
[2] https://www.bariweiss.com/resignation-letter
[3] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/11/substack-a...
[4] https://greenwald.substack.com/p/my-resignation-from-the-int...
[+] [-] atoav|5 years ago|reply
And of course: the world is confusing and complex. Stuff that was previously something only crazy people would believe turned out to be true (think Snowden). Given such a world isn't it easier to just form some idea in thin air and worship it instead of admitting that you have no clue what is going on? This is what is happening here.
And social media is the perfect echo chamber to avoid the cognitive dissonance one would get when the rubber meets the road in terms of an reality check. If there are millions others that share your world view how wrong can you be?
Media isn't innocent in that sense, politics isn't innocent, social media companies and marketing people aren't innocent. They are all complicit in this. But saying something among the lines of "people go to apeshit conspiracy nonsense sites because they don't trust the media" would be a bit far fetched as well.
I think the main reason people do it is because A) they can and B) it feels better than not doing it.
The classical media is certainly part of that feeling, but certainly not the biggest part of it.
[+] [-] bananabreakfast|5 years ago|reply
If you're referring to Russia actively interfering with American elections through a pointed and state sponsored disinformation campaign that continues to this day... then that's not a narrative? That's a thing that's happening that matters and is one of the principle sources of bad actors behind this very article
[+] [-] fokinsean|5 years ago|reply
I'm fairly sure my family's opinions come straight from the media.
[+] [-] kibwen|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] redisman|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jonnycomputer|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] KittenInABox|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] specialist|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] youareostriches|5 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] eranima|5 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] zyxzevn|5 years ago|reply
I tried to give a guideline on how to do critical thinking and how to investigate the truth about something.
The first steps are: 1) logical fallacies 2) the scientific method .. And I think that these should be part of basic education.
Then we have 4) possible fraud/crime 5) bias 6) Unknowns. Which help to understand the limits or problems with different conclusions.
And 7) solutions. is how to work towards a common acceptable solution
Here is the full guideline: https://saidit.net/s/Solutions/comments/50i5/how_to_investig... Feel free to comment / add to it.
[+] [-] nprz|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yokaze|5 years ago|reply
I would say it has, and I consider only reasonable that there is a desire to understand the mechanisms behind it. I would consider the effects net negative. No need to a concerted effort.
[+] [-] farias0|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tmp5690|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] disown|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 6gvONxR4sf7o|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] theplague42|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] at-fates-hands|5 years ago|reply
Stengel wrote last year in a Washington Post op-ed that US freedom of speech was too unfettered and that changes must be considered:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/10/29/why-ameri...
Constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley warned about Stengel’s appointment in a column Tuesday: “It would be difficult to select a more anti-free speech figure to address government media policy, one has to assume that Biden will continue the onslaught against this core freedom as president.”
He noted that Biden himself had publicly advocated restrictions on speech during the campaign: “Biden called for greater speech controls on the Internet and denounced Twitter for allowing others to speak freely.”
One side of the political aisle rallies against social media for censoring their posts while the other side says social media don't censor enough. I feel there is a simmering battle over a lot of our constitutionally protected rights which is about to reach a crescendo depending on what the Biden administration does in the next few years.
[+] [-] specialist|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bosswipe|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] damnencryption|5 years ago|reply
I think it's media hacking another vulnerable parts of human beings. I see attempts to censor and attempts to fake being censored in order to hijack different vulnerabilities.
[+] [-] jeffbee|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] newacct583|5 years ago|reply
People are going to believe that. LOTS of people are going to believe that. And it's not because of "information overload". It's just a lie. It's a lie that (1) is tempting for people to believe and (2) that someone is willing to tell.
The internet didn't make our brains more susceptible to fake news. It just made our leaders (some of them) more able to get away with lies.
[+] [-] dsign|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pcj-github|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] galaxyLogic|5 years ago|reply
Corporations have solved the problem of needing accurate information with the system of double-entry book-keeping and also with the idea that finances are managed by two parties the "Controller" and the "Treasurer" who are each watching each other.
[+] [-] tehjoker|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NullIsland|5 years ago|reply
I have the time to look at both sides of a given issue and do not fall on either side of any political or social group. I attempt to post moderate reasonable ideas that are well vetted. But this gets me called a fence sitter.
But what is scarier, in my opinion, is the idea of censorship. I would rather wad through crap than see anything censored, aside from clear incitement to commit violence.
[+] [-] patcon|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jellicle|5 years ago|reply
1) Fox network profits from doing so
2) Facebook Corp. profits from doing so
Neither of those two reasons are "information overload".
You know how every once in a while, some email spam network gets shut down and all of a sudden, the global email spam volume gets cut in half? Just from one network? That's what would happen if Facebook and Fox were shut down.
[+] [-] galaxyLogic|5 years ago|reply
"... make it more difficult to create and share low-quality information. This could involve adding friction by forcing people to pay to share or receive information. Payment could be in the form of time"
This could mean a simple rule such as: "You can only post once a day (for free)"
[+] [-] vrperson|5 years ago|reply
Afaik their Botometer tool is also highly disputed, supposedly having way too many false positives.
They also use supposed "independent fact checkers" for reference, when those "independent fact checkers" on Facebook and Twitter are decidedly left leaning. This in turn casts doubt on their conclusions on the differences between Democrats and Republicans (for example something like Republicans are more likely to believe fake news as verified by independent fact checkers - or maybe left leaning fact checkers are more likely to label "conservative news" as fake news).
Ironically, the whole article is too long to comment on it all, kind of supporting the title of it (information overload helps spread fake news).
I find it very concerning how people start to overly rely on "studies". It really needs to become common knowledge that a "study of this" or a "study of that" really doesn't prove anything just yet. Those studies need to be scrutinized and verified and replicated, and properly interpreted.
[+] [-] bJGVygG7MQVF8c|5 years ago|reply
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