[sjbase]

> It took the truth about six times as long as falsehood to reach 1500 people and 20 times as long as falsehood to reach a cascade depth of 10. As the truth never diffused beyond a depth of 10, we saw that falsehood reached a depth of 19 nearly 10 times faster than the truth reached a depth of 10

The study attributes most of that force multiplier to novelty and surprise, where falsehood will always have an advantage; important things that actually happen are often not surprising. Maybe people who wrap truth in clickbaity headlines are actually heroes, trying to even out the playing field... I never really thought of it that way before.

[nemild]

Absolutely, I know several journalists who think about how to pitch the "health food" of boring, but important articles with clickbait titles.

Another question to ask: In old print media, is it ok to have crazily sensationalistic headlines on the front page, with the hope that it gets people read the thoughtful journalism underneath?

Just to give you a sense, I took 1.5 years of death coverage in the NY Times and compared to actual deaths. My gut is that the reason for the coverage gap is primarily a function of reader interest, which presumably gets people to read more:

https://www.nemil.com/s/part3-horror-films.html

As the old aphorism goes, "if it bleed, it leads"

[stcredzero]

Here's an antidote:

https://www.theknifemedia.com/

[13years]

Looks good, but in the end, this is what I tell people.

"The media you trust is the most dangerous media of all."

In other words, don't ever turn off your brain and just accept what you are being told. Inevitably the only solution is to question it all and get input from multiple sources.

[anigbrowl]

Pseudo-objectivity with pretty analytics that just happens to have a glaring selection bias and where everything is neatly explained by self-appointed analytical experts. In other words, just like existing media but with catchier design.

[stcredzero]

Pseudo-objectivity

They are at least directly addressing the mechanism of emotive language discussed in Manufacturing Consent. It looks to me, like they're doing a much better than average job at that.

glaring selection bias

Pretty much a part of the human condition. At least they're trying.

[bmpafa]

nice site, but i'll never understand the thinking behind "let's ask if they want to receive notifications immediately upon first page-hit"

does anyone actually click 'yes' to that prompt?

[stcredzero]

Notifications on websites are just the pop-ups of 2018.

[smichel17]

There are some sites on which I appreciate them, but exclusively those are sites where I have accounts and would otherwise revive them over email or something. Anything that asks to show notifications on first load gets "never show".

[bmpafa]

...which are just the spam mail of 2008, which were just the extra-volume used car ads of 1999, which were just the pushy salesman of the 19-aughts.

Everything new is old and notification prompts on first visit are still a terrible idea.

[dgut]

Thanks for the link.

[stcredzero]

Here's another, with fairly good voluntary moderation:

https://www.reddit.com/r/NeutralPolitics/

[kbenson]

Wow, that's an interesting sub. They've formalized a lot of the HN community standards into hard rules, and brutally enforce them. For example, this[1] post has 36 comments, and 10 of them were removed for either not being substantive, not backing up statements of fact with a source, or some other reason, and another is reminder of a top level comment to include sources.

I'm not sure they haven't gone too far to some degree here, especially since the offending comments were deleted, not just hidden, so it's hard to see whether the mods are justified or not in all cases.

I subbed in any case, so I guess I'll get a chance to see more to make a more informed decision.

1: https://www.reddit.com/r/NeutralPolitics/comments/81f8wf/are...

[anigbrowl]

No, clickbaity headlines just make everything worse. On the other hand, knowing that fake news has much longer resharing chains is a valuable filtering tool.