[mattnewton]

Last time I went on X my feed which I curated from ML contributors and a few politicians had multiple white nationalist memes, and engagement slop. Fact checks frequently are added after millions of impressions.

I am sure there are very smart well meaning people working on it but it certainly doesn’t feel better than the BBC to me. At least I know that’s state media of the UK and when something is published I see the same article as other people.

[HaZeust]

>"but it certainly doesn’t feel better than the BBC to me"

BBC was cutting-edge for creating and fostering methodologies that went on to become most of the "impartial reporting" practices from journalists. So, even if it's not feeling any "better" than BBC, that's still a pretty good step in the right direction!

[mattnewton]

The parent poster was saying X was better than the BBC, I certainly wouldn't have picked that one, but it's likely because they get their news from conservative outlets outraged by the recutting of Trump's speech on January 6th.

[qcnguy]

That phrasing sounds like you're not yourself outraged by it. It wouldn't be surprising given the institutional attitudes seen at the BBC (and Channel 4 which got caught doing something even worse) - clearly, leftists have decided that framing politicians and publishing entirely fake news is acceptable if it's to attack right wing people.

Anyone who knows about that event and is still watching the BBC afterwards is saying they don't care about the truth of their own beliefs. Dangerous stuff.

[johnnyanmac]

>So, even if it's not feeling any "better" than BBC, that's still a pretty good step in the right direction!

The step in the direction of decentralized filter bubbles isoating society? With no channels to hold info accountable and checked/upfated for accuracy?

[HaZeust]

GP made a pretty good case for X being a good-faithed attempt at a new distributed structure for mass media that at least TRIES to have conflicting viewpoints or objectivist "fact checks", even if it occasionally misses the mark. I was VERY early on the "hate-Elon" bandwagon and even earlier on not being an active Twitter/X user (search my username).

In a post-Fairness Doctrine world, what else would satisfy you?

[johnnyanmac]

>In a post-Fairness Doctrine world

I don't think we're in a post fairness doctrine world, for one. So no, I haven't given up on the idea of he 4th estate. Your solution to bias is, as always, to not take any one source for granted. Take time to actually read articles from multiple angles that fall in line with the Fariness Doctrine. Then from there, use your own lived experiences to form your own viewpoint.

Outsourcing that to soundbites from randos on twitter with middle school lieracy is insanity. But let me use a charitable lens here.

Any notion of X being a good faith attempt at being a community-lead fact checker got broken with the introduction of Grok. Then those hopes were shattered to pieces when Grok was shown to be massively compromised by yet another central figure. One who, yes, has the literacy of a middle schooler. We somehow ended up with the worst of both worlds having centralization of a bad knowledge hub and stupidity.

>what else would satisfy you?

if using our brains is out of the equation and lack of censorship is truly the most important metric of "free discussion": let's just bring back 4chan. no names or personalities, 99% free-for-all, it technically has threading support to engage in conversations. There is centralization, but compared to the rest of the internet the moderators and admins stay very quiet.

There's a lot I hate about modern social media, but surprisingly 4chan only has like 2 things I strongly dislike. Big step up from the 20+ reasons I can throw at nearly every other site.