[otakucode]

Turning 40 this year, so I remember the same media you do. As the Internet grew and options proliferated, I always wanted a particular kind of news that I haven't seen crop up yet. Just a feed. No commentary, no talking heads discussing what something might mean. Just a network which shows video of news events happening. If something is happening in the legislature, I want to watch the legislators doing it. I can get the interpretation and more information about what's going on somewhere else. But the bare "this is what happened" without the fluff just isn't something you can really get. And sure, there's still editorial influence in what they would choose to show and how its shown and other such things, but a countless number of times I've just wanted to see the thing that actually happened.

We have known for centuries that who says a thing cannot influence its truth. How a thing is expressed can't affect it either. An untreated schizophrenic hobo screaming into the street can be telling the truth, and an esteemed professor reporting on new findings in his field can be a liar. It has always been inadvisable to do anything other than analyze claims critically, and I suppose if deepfaking becomes widespread, that will have to be relied upon more than ever.

[adamrezich]

Instead of your hypothetical ideal online news feed, we get the opposite: headlines which now attempt to directly program the reader's attitude about the thesis of the article, because nobody reads the article anyways these days (in this information economy), just the headlines. Thus, the body of the article is increasingly useless as a persuasion tool, especially compared to the headline, so the result--the headline which tells you the thesis of the article and how to feel about it in the same breath--is only the logical conclusion to what social media is doing to our brains, and to society.

https://www.bing.com/search?q=and+that%27s+a+good+thing

https://www.bing.com/search?q=and+that%27s+a+bad+thing