[Reedx]

This is the result of the attention economy and the fact that nothing generates engagement like anger. That's what gets the most clicks and does so much cheaper than real journalism. So performative outrage is what becomes incentivized, both in the news and on twitter in a self-reinforcing cycle. Those who generate and harness the most outrage are the winners of the game.

How do we fix this?

That's an open question. But I think we need to change the game and the incentives. We probably need a new business model and/or for this kind of news to become widely understood as the junk food entertainment it is. Maybe put a nutrition label or cancer-like warning on them, heh...

[Knulp]

Let's take Buzzfeed.

Most of what they post is utter clickbait and not really informative. They also do amazing pieces of investigation because this model brought them money and they wanted to use it to do better work.

See this article from 2018 that was nominated for a Pullitzer Prize. https://www.buzzfeed.com/heidiblake/from-russia-with-blood-1...

Does that mean you rate Buzzfeed as cancer - including the great reporting they sometimes do ? Or each article independently ? But then who does it ?

Open questions here as well ^^

[luckylion]

Radio active material can anecdotally give you super powers, but usually it just gives you cancer. It's generally a good idea to avoid it, because the chances that you don't wake up being able to fly are too high.

The same goes for Buzzfeed in my opinion. Yes, there may be something of value every other year, but generally it's shit. You don't want to regularly ingest shit on the off chance that there's some delicious candy in there somewhere.