[DaveZale]

I've been watching both the corporate media, and social media, rot completely over the past 30 years.

A large part of that was that early adopters tended to be more educated, played nicely, and were not involved in attention-seeking, sychophancy, and often, escapism.

Another factor is the bright colors, moving videos and other eye candy, and psychological hacks like the emojis for "liking" and gaining "followers" which produce addictive feedback loops.

Of course, this interview touches on valid points, but is not the whole picture. "Bad news travels fast" and gets more clicks. That helps explain the rot of the news media.

Maybe I am oversimplifying too, however. Factors like sophisticated persuasion campaigns by various organizations, for example, cannot be discarded. Likewise with the advertisers.

[dredmorbius]

Agree strongly with your first factor. Early adopters often (though not always) self-select for higher-level interaction. This has been true of media dating back to cuneiform.

A third factor addressing 21st century media rot is the absolute dependence on advertising, and the demonitisation of earlier ad-supported formats (print newspapers, print magazines, radio, television, and increasingly non-social-media online platforms) as ads transferred first to "new media" (itself an old story, though dating somewhat more recently to the origins of mass-advertising in the mid-19th century), and ultimately to "adtech", with highly-personalised, highly-targeted advertising.

That latter both led advertisers to abandon non-targetable media (including generic online banner ads), and the increasing pandering of online media (especially Search and Social) to advertiser interests. This both killed ads-as-financial-foundation of other online media, and increasingly turned Search and Social into ad-delivery rather than information-delivery / community-connection platforms.

It's the odd standouts which have independent funding which are still relatively immune to this. HN is one of those, some sites such as Metafilter and the Metaverse are others online. Public media would be another notable exception, though of course it is being increasingly targeted as well, largely for political reasons, notably in the US (NPR, PBS, and the late CPB), and UK (BBC). It's healthier elsewhere, notably in my experience, Germany.

[dredmorbius]

Gah! Fediverse, not Metaverse.

[DaveZale]

Sure, Germany has excellent journalism. I visit dw.com often. derspiegel has very in-depth quality journalism too. And many others surely exist, I just don't know about them.

100% agree about the personalization of news topics and stories. When I look at my spouse's newsfeed in the evening (she uses yahoo) I remark to her "that's clickbait" and get a relatively violent reaction. "Relatively" because normally she is very pleasant. But tailoring the media to past viewing history is potentially very dangerous. In the wrong hands, the news feed could be tweaked just a little bit, day by day, week by week, to enable or worsen certain biases. And surely, we see some of this daily already. Why else would billionaires purchase large US media companies?

The best guidance I've seen to have a well balanced view of world news, is to use several independent sources globally. Do not rely upon "newsfeeds" (doesn't it suggest that we are cattle in a way?), don't spend too much time in any one place, use a variety of search engines to confirm or disprove questionable conclusions, and try to read print books by reputable authors on topics that really fascinate us.

Nassim Talib offered some good advice in his books on the so-called "news" - if you really want to see the value in the news, try to go to the library for a print newspaper, and look at the news from a week ago. Is it really as important to you as the "news" today? Very often, it will seem completely meaningless, ancient history. If that is the case, we are getting something from the information other than the information itself. It's something that has to be tried to learn the lesson.

Advertising? I see very little, using linux with brave browser and various plug ins. When I use google chrome, the results are horrifying. I've used google for 30 years now, but have been de-googling for over a year now. It's been a healthy experience. I don't know what is happening with them. Maybe they abandoned the "don't be evil" prematurely?

[inigyou]

One time I accidentally flicked onto German TV - I am not sure which channel - and they were talking about Berlin getting overrun by antisemitic mobs. I looked out my hotel window. No antisemitic mob.

I really don't think they're more reliable than UK or US media.

[DaveZale]

Well that kind of "news" is persistent and often completely false. Meanwhile churches and mosques and people get destroyed by the "best friend and ally" of the US. It's a coordinated disinformation campaign by the agency whose motto is "by deception we wage war"

Nothing to see here, move along move along.

I reconcile it by realizing that advertisers wield enormous power. Also, it's not called "good information" it's called "news" - nothing is promised in terms of guaranteed good factual content. And I remember that Palestinians are semites. So are Arabs. Immigrants from Eastern European flocking to the mideast are not semites at all.

[inigyou]

The fact that most Palestinians are Semitic people and most modern Israelis are not Semitic is amusing, but we all know that when people say antisemitic they don't mean anti-Palestinian.

[dredmorbius]

...look at the news from a week ago...

Indeed.

Because Reasons I found myself with ready access to cable television about a year ago and spent a few days sampling news from CNN, Bloomberg, and a few other sources. Mind that my understanding is that these are more substantive linear-programmed news sources. I found them all but unwatchable. Most of the airtime was spent either in speculation on what might occur, or (occasionally, for variety), largely uniformed commentary on something which just had, though and substantive specifics were virtually always lacking.

Another long-time preferred information source of mine has been On the Media, from WNYC, New York City. That's a one-hour weekly programme (with a shorter, usually 20--30 minute mid-week podcast episode), generally broken into 3--4 stories. These are typically interviews, pre-recorded and edited. The result is a considered take, usually on substantive stories of the previous week. The show's conceit is that it follows media rather than news, though the distinction is of course pretty blurry. Listening to that and checking headlines from a few sources through the week usually keeps me fairly informed on broad developments without wasting time and attention on irrelevancies.

I'll also subscribe to the individual-segments version of some national-level news programmes. A few times a month I might scan through those and listen to an in-depth segment (usually 3--9 minutes or so) on an item. Most segments, I find, are obviously either speculative or uninformed as with the 24/7 products by Bloomberg and CNN, despite being a once-a-day hourly show.

I've mentioned before on HN that NPR (US public radio network) has lost much quality in its drive to fully-live production starting after 9/11. Prior to that, most of the flagship news programme content (Morning Edition and All Things Considered (evening), as well as weekend programming) consisted of pre-recorded and edited segments, with a live news headlines cover at the top and bottom of the hour, and perhaps a live or at least recent-ish introduction from the programme hosts. With the switch to live production, all of the throat-clearing and jagged-edges of taking on live contributions, chasing guests off the end of their allotted time slots, and inability to edit for length, clarity, and relevance are apparent. I find the result generally both uninteresting and unlistenable.

A daily show which has retained pre-recorded, edited, production basis is The World, from WBUR/Boston. It has a fraction of the budget and staffing of NPR's flagships but produces a far more coherent product. The fact that it's also much less US-centric (despite being a US production) is also welcome respite from the insanity that comprises current US politics (and increasingly, other news-affine aspects).

As for personalisation: I was mostly referring to advertising. But you're quite right: for algorithmic- / AI-curated streams platforms, the specific content items presented to a reader/viewer are also selected by the platform, and generally not with the aim of informing that reader but in addicting them to that content. There's some interesting commentary from early days of the Internet on the hidden value of mass curation (as with large-scale print or broadcast media), or negative side-effects of "personalised" media. John Seeley Brown's The Social Life of Information (2000) addresses the first, Andrew J. Shapiro's The Control Revolution (1999) the second. More recently it's been noted that personalised targeting (of both advertising and "content") means that it's often difficult to assess what kinds of things others in your immediate community are being exposed to, both informally and for those researching media impacts.

[inigyou]

Metaverse is immune to ad capture because it never got popular enough to have ad interest?

[dredmorbius]

NB: I'd meant to write Fediverse, not Metaverse. I'm referring to Mastodon and associated federated social networks, not the recent Facebook flop (well, one of several).

There's been spam, and some attempts at other forms of monetisation such as sex-work sites. The larger issue for advertising is that the protocol and hosting model are such that advertising isn't integral, or supported, is seen as counter to the person-centric focus of the platform, and hence is pretty readily shut down.

Contrast commercial social media which were envisioned from the start as ad-delivery mechanisms, with social interaction as a side effect.

That isn't to say that the Fediverse isn't susceptible to some forms of advertising, only that that tendency runs counter to the dynamics of the platform, rather than strongly aligning with them as is the case on Google Web Search, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Reddit, Twitter, etc., etc., etc.

Evidence is strong that people as a whole reject advertising. They may seek specific information or recommendations, but tend not to like getting spammed with irrelevant (and intrusive, invasive, and worse) messages. To that extent, so long as the Fediverse remains focused on its participants and not advertisers interests, it should remain fairly robustly resistant.

See similarly The Well and Metafilter, both of which though small had or have user cohorts which are fairly attractive to advertisers and marketers generally (affluent, educated, influential). But not being ad-dependent or ad-focused themselves, they've remained largely free of gratuitously promotional content.

By contrast, Google+, also quite small by modern standards[1], did find itself rather overrun by marketers and brands, at least for a time. Not ad-based, but Google pushed the marketing angle and branded content did become somewhat pervasive for a while.

________________________________

Notes:

1. I found a methodology to accurately measure active participation in the platform, I have quite a good sense of how large it was, roughly 5--10 million or so accounts posting monthly as of 2015. See: <https://web.archive.org/web/20150130125653/https://ello.co/d...> <https://kevinanderson.nl/how-many-people-are-publicly-using-...> <https://www.businessinsider.com/google-active-users-2015-1>. The methodology was replicated and validated independently a few months later on roughly 10x the sample size: <https://web.archive.org/web/20150419171939/https://www.stone...>.