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by dontchooseanick 1324 days ago
Very opiniated answer here : I now rely mostly on Wikipedia, cf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events

Most news look to me as entertainment, not information. Articles detail what B.Spears has done or what hominous unacceptable sentence has been said by CongressMan X or Y.

Spoiler : I don't want entertainment, I don't want to be outraged (most people do and won't really admit it). I want the state of the world, at least a comprehensive and kinda global one.

Did you know there is a war in tigray (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tigray_War) ? Well wikipedia has been reporting it for a year. Most news outlet focus only on Ukraine (yes it's important) and on the latest hookup of celebrity Z.

> to what end does this actually benefit the individual?

Agreed, entertainment does not improve my global thinking. News does.

> For those that have experimented with “going dark” in a sense, how was it, what did you do and what’s a good balance?

Completely dark, no FB, no Insta, no twitter/reddit/name_it . It's almost boringly peaceful. Craving is only the first half a year. Now I feel like I can describe some "shape" of the world - but of course in parties I can't relate to the (useless) "Did you see this guy sneezing coca cola on tiktok - yeah right, gross, it was all over the news for a week".

PS: happy with it.

4 comments

FYI there is a quite nice concise front-end for the wikipedia news portal: https://legiblenews.com/
Didn't know this existed, appreciate the insight. Definitely going to give this a try.
Thanks for pointing out the wiki portal. I have added it to my small list of news sites.
How do you find topics to read up on via Wikipedia? In particular news topics. I’m a frequent user of visiting the site but unfamiliar with the idea of using it to stay informed on the dynamic world we live in.
I'll try to repeat ? read this : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events

> How do you find topics to read up on via Wikipedia?

The above link is the "News Portal" of Wikipedia. I'll assume that -like me at 1st- you didn't even imagine it could exist.

Front page after language choice has highlights.