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by dhab 1186 days ago
I think it's a bit extreme. I have developed some heurisitics, which so far are (living in Australia):

* news.com.au = clickbait

* government funded ones = abc, sbs are free and ok

* 9 news, 7 news = negative

* google news = aggregator of mostly negative news

* AFR, Sydney Morning Herald, .. few others = ok

My experience with twitter has been the following:

* I look at some content I subscribed for (humor, or tech related)

* Then it feeds suggestions which spiral downwards into negativity (sometimes extreme - like videos of people getting shot). Soon, I resent twitter and the platform.

Experience with youtube: meh, but not as bad as Twitter as described above

Experience with Quora: better and interesting

Facebook: I avoid

TikTok (my wife's): interesting content - but happy to view via my wife's mobile, since it naturally limits my consumption

Netflix: good and bad, but ok
3 comments
ImaCake 1186 days ago
I would say both ABC and SMH often lead with clickbait as well. I sometimes check the headlines and it is almost always a waste of time and emotional energy.

The top article on abc at the moment is clickbaity and niche, although, I give credit to it actually being of relevance to some people.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-03-18/leaky-buildings-poor-...

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nomilk 1186 days ago
I would swap a lot of these out for primary sources. 'News' sites are just middle-men for a 9:1 blend of unimportant trash and important information. Occasionally they can alert you of something important you need to know about, but once I learn of such topics, I examine primary source(s) and context; very rarely do I get info from the 'news' article itself; it's usually designed to titillate or outrage.
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wolverine876 1186 days ago
> 'News' sites are just middle-men for a 9:1 blend of unimportant trash and important information.

You are looking at the wrong sites. There are many - more than I can read - which focus on serious news.

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wanderingmind 1186 days ago
The most interesting news website for down under is theconversation. The quality is much much higher than any other general news website I have ever read.
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