[t12hrow]

> perhaps government-funded

I suggest the opposite. I'd like a proof that there is no government involvement.

Believe it or not, I think the closest to this is ideal is 4chan /pol/. It's not backed by any major corporation (unlike HN which is backed by Y Combinator), it's not partly owned by Tencent/China (unlike Reddit), and so on. There's no algorithm, there's no karma, there's no blue badge, it barely scrapes by using shady NSFW ads. That's the closest to the libertarian anarchy ideal we had in 90s.

There's of course alphabet agencies mining data and pushing narratives, but that's fine.

[ar-nelson]

I don't see how an unmoderated, anarchic space like 4chan is close to what I described; the entire point of what I had in mind is a very specific kind of moderation: stories are only published if (a) they're reasonably likely to materially affect some significant portion of readers sometime in the next 6 months, and (b) there's something they can do about it or in response to it.

For example, if the readership of this news service was entirely US-based, then it would only publish a single article on the Ukraine war---when it started---and then might only ever mention it again if it has a direct practical effect on US residents, like travel restrictions.

[t12hrow]

> (a) they're reasonably likely to materially affect some significant portion of readers sometime in the next 6 months, and (b) there's something they can do about it or in response to it.

That's the entire point. Who are you to decide that? How can you quantify 'likelyhood to be materially affected'? How can you empirically determine if 'someone can do something about X'?

Your opinion is worth the same as the next guy's. Anarchy and no moderation whatsoever, in this context, is always better no matter how you try to rationalize it. The only problem is that it makes is harder to tell the signal from the noise (noise being fake stuff, tangential topics, hearsay, bullshit, etc.). But the opposite is much much worse.

[ar-nelson]

I get the sense that you think I'm saying more here than I actually am. I'm not proposing that this is the only kind of news that should exist, only that it would be nice if it existed for the kind of people that want to read (only) this kind of news.

And I'm generally in agreement that most attempts to quantify 'truth' in media are hopelessly dependent on personal bias---but this mostly shows up in category #2 in my list. In things where you'd never know the difference if it were true or not, because it would never affect you either way.

The reason I thought a news service like this would work better as a government service than a private entity is because a government news service's commitment to the principles I listed could be defined by enforceable laws. "Likely to materially affect people" is something that you could reasonably argue about in a courtroom, just as much as other fuzzily-defined legal concepts like libel or false advertising.

I'm imagining a news agency whose legal responsibilities were defined in such a way that it could be sued if one of the following happened:

1. It reports something that no reasonable person would believe meets the criteria.

2. Readers experience some kind of material harm that could have been avoided if they had read news reported in another outlet but not this one. And this harm is not the result of the reader being in some very small minority of readers (say, <1%), because after a certain point this will always be true for things that affect a very small number of people.

[UncleEntity]

> …a government news service's commitment to the principles I listed could be defined by enforceable laws.

The problem is whoever controls the government and controls the news is also the one enforcing the laws.

You want to see suppression of “fake news”, aka anything that makes the ruling party look bad, then look no further than government run media services.

I think they thought long and hard before they add freedom of the press to the bill of rights.

NPR does a half-assed good job of providing unbiased news (they unironically claim that title) as long as it isn’t some hot button issue like Roe v Wade. In those cases they go into full on partisan politics propaganda machine mode. My absolute favorite, as I enjoy the absurd, was trotting out some kids who grew up in foster care with the implication that they would have been better off if their mother had had an abortion. Just an example, not a statement of purpose.

[Shocka1]

Summed up NPR pretty well. I listen to NPR, but sometimes it gets a bit much on the partisan stuff. However, they are still my choice for anything news related. I noticed a big change in them around the 2016 election when they shut down their comment section.

Since you brought up that abortion segment, here is another from last November when they ran audio of an actual abortion. Beware - it's brutal:

https://www.npr.org/2022/11/03/1133790770/what-its-like-insi...

[Eisenstein]

> The problem is whoever controls the government and controls the news is also the one enforcing the laws.

I know that it is not as applicable today, but you should really look into the whole 'separation of powers' thing.

[UncleEntity]

The executive branch is in charge of enforcing the laws and is also traditionally the leader of the party.

Congress can pass all the laws it wants but they have no power to ensure they are being acted upon. And sometimes have no power to stop them from being violated like the whole Trail of Tears thing where a sitting president blatantly violated the law with no repercussions.

[t12hrow]

I understand what you're saying, and it would definitely make for an interesting experiment. If every news piece meets that criteria, it would be a very specific subset of news, but valuable nonetheless.

[dahart]

> Anarchy and no moderation whatsoever, in this context, is always better [...] the opposite is much much worse.

Why do you think this? What is your basis for this claim? Note specifically that in unmoderated channels, governments already do participate with propaganda, so your claim that the only problem is distinguishing signal from noise is false by your own stated standards.

Agenda in reporting is a problem, there is no question, but I don’t buy for a second that anarchy is “always” better or even often better. I would agree that there are times when it helps, but I think it’s closer to few and far between, and that the noise and chaos in the mean time is detrimental and damaging to someone’s ability to see truth when it does come through. To use the example from this thread, 4chan is usually demonstrably and objectively worse than any mainstream news at sharing important, relevant, and true information.

[t12hrow]

> 4chan is usually demonstrably and objectively worse than any mainstream news at sharing important, relevant, and true information.

Are you talking about trivial news reporting ("this thing happened today")? If so, yes.

If you're talking about important questions in society, no. I mean, if you want full-on propaganda you can read the New York Times or The Atlantic, or Washington Post, etc. Aside from tangible reporting, your probability of finding truth about important questions in society is extremely low, while they tout it to be really high -- extremely disingenuous. And yes, in all of these places the Opinion section has adquired so much relevance that they are no longer newspapers in the traditional sense.

On the other hand, if you want actual truth, you'll have to read through tons of bullshit, slurs, memes, jokes, fake news, fake tweets, CIA narratives, Mossad/JIDF narratives, but it will be there... buried somewhere deep in a 4chan thread. The great thing about this is that there's no pretense, it's: come at your own risk, use common sense, take everything with a grain of salt, "everything said here is satire".

> Note specifically that in unmoderated channels, governments already do participate with propaganda

That's definitely true, there's even specific slurs for those pushing propaganda. But that's the beauty of it, there could be conflicting narratives being pushed at once, and there's no way to tell whether someone believes it or is just shilling. At the end of the day, it's just an anonymous comment and you can only determine it's value based on the content of the post. You can't even safely tell if it's a human or a bot nowadays.

I have no doubt in my mind that the free flow of information is always better. Now, you can argue about the practicity of this, and you'd be right. The thing is, this is a symptom of the state of affairs. Think about it, there are 8 billion people walking on Earth, a great proportion of which have a computer with an internet connection and a high quality camera in their pockets. That means that this year will be the most commented on, most recorded in human history by far. On top of that, there are governments around the world spending billions of US dollars in propaganda. It's no wonder 'truth' is obfuscated and almost impossible to come by.

[dahart]

I appreciate the response, but yeah I just don’t buy that 4chan is better on any axis ever, especially for important world news. I see and acknowledge that you lack trust in mainstream news and your government, and there’s probably a longer story there, but I think it’s objectively false to claim you’ll find more truth on 4chan than mainstream news. It might be fair to say that certain subjects will be discussed that you wouldn’t see on TV, then again there’s almost no way to tell, and the stuff on 4chan is is rarely if ever made by people with any qualifications or expertise in the subject.

This twisted argument seems to be claiming that 4chan is more trustworthy because it’s less trustworthy. But you’re demonstrating a double standard. If you can excuse and overlook the unending ocean of fake news and propaganda and bullshit on 4chan, then it’s only fair and consistent to do the same for mainstream news, where it’s also true that not everything is propaganda. You’re whole complaint boils down to you writhing against the “pretense”, but why does that matter, exactly? You either care about the truth or not, so the reputation shouldn’t be a factor for you, especially if you seek information from disreputable sources.

[t12hrow]

That's a fair argument, and I can't dispute it. Thinking about this made me reflect a different way to put it. It shouldn't be one vs. the other, but rather, 4chan (and similar forums) are a meta reading of the news and train you to see blind spots or what's not being reported, listen to arguments from both sides of the aisle, and sprinkles a healthy dose of skepticism. After all, most of the discussion revolves around an extract from a maintream newspaper article or mainstream personality, so you're exposed to the "mainstream viewpoint" no matter what.

So the bottomline of what I'm trying to say would be: if you exclusively consume mainstream news, you're probably more vulnerable to adhere to a narrow viewpoint, and maybe not even know there are people who disagree.

Similar to how HN operates when discussing a blog post, especially clickbaity posts -- when reading the comments you may see that there's more to the story or that the author is wrong about something. Sometimes that has helped me get a more nuanced perspective on a specific topic.

[regpertom]

Isn’t the pretence important? If I talk to a bunch of people at the pub I’m likely to get various answers, increase the size of the pub and I’ll get to hear all kinds of different stuff and since it’s just people at a pub I can take it or leave it at my will. But when there’s perceived authority involved, a trusted newspaper, maybe a uni lecturer, that kind of thing, then it’s easy to be frustrated that you still have to treat them like people from a pub because they’ve spent considerable effort having me believe they’re better than that. Maybe it’s the difference in expectations between brainstorming and a final review, or a professional and an amateur.

[zztop44]

But of course, that misses the nuance. Lots of US-based readers come from Ukraine, have friends or family in Ukraine, or friends or family in Russia or another neighbouring country. Of course, that might be fine if your media hypothetical outlet is just one of many. But then people will probably just still end up the ones with categories #2 and #3 regardless.

[wil421]

4chan is a sick community where mental illness is coveted. You are correct about the 90s and finding true niche communities you could hang with, sharing ideas and ideology like the BBS days. Today is very different and the amount of brain washing put forth by anti-America bots and propaganda/make a buck machines is ridiculous.

The reality these places are pushing, including HN, is out of touch with society. Even the European stuff is so out of touch I get crazy looks and responses when I’ve asked people (Europeans) about them.

[suzumer]

I wouldn't describe 4chan as karmaless. While the site bemoans the idea of upvotes (updoots), they'll also be the first to tell you how much they crave replies (which they call "you"s). We can see how much this affects the forum, with many people posting content, not because they think it is the best thing to post, but because they think it will get a reaction.

[t12hrow]

Yes, I've thought about that. In my opinion, the difference is that "you(s)" often reward controversial/contrarian takes. 4chan is already contrarian so what I mean here is going the opposite way. That is, you can go and post something that's completely against the culture of the forum and you'll get plenty of reactions. Even if it's just insults or slurs.

In a funny way, this incentivises swiming against the current, so there's never a consensus.

Karma on the other hand only creates a chilling effect, beacuse you're either banned or shadowbanned or somehow silenced. Take HN for example, if you post something controversial here not only it doesn't get more visibility, but it's grey-ed out and thrown to the bottom.

[hot_gril]

4chan only (sorta) works at a small scale, which it is. It's a niche. "No normies!"

[t12hrow]

I don't know if I consider it small scale, it has around 45M views a month according to similarweb: https://www.similarweb.com/website/4chan.org/#overview.

Of course, it's still small scale in relation to behemoths like Twitter, FB, Insta, TikTok.

[hot_gril]

Some qualification: It's small enough that each board has a global chrono view of posts, same with replies on posts. You can reply back and forth and still understand what's going on despite the other noise.

[jonasdegendt]

Given that there’s basically no way to interact besides posting or replying, I’m willing to bet most of that traffic is just lurkers. And another large chunk of that traffic probably congregates on boards like /a/ and /g/.

Some boards are incredibly slow given the popularity of the site as a whole, threads on boards like /n/ can stay up for weeks with barely any replies.