To be fair it's mental effort that you now have to expend when you didn't before.

I stopped reading the news because it just became too tiring.

Not saying it's right or wrong. It's just - I understand.

I don't think there was ever a time when critical thinking and fact checking wasn't needed. Nobody has the time to do deep dives into everything, but the more important something is to you, or the more likely it is to impact your life the more it's worth investing the time it takes to do a couple web searches.

Today CNN says that Brazil’s former President Jair Bolsonaro has skin cancer. Is that true? Damned if I know. Will I spend the time trying to verify that? Nope.

▲

cm2187 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

I think the idea that newspapers and TV were ever honest is an illusion. I remember my parents and grandparents ranting about the lies published by major newspapers in the 80s and 90s either on topics or people they knew. We tend to forget the bad things in distant past, particularly a past we haven’t lived through. I don’t think news sources are worse today. They were always bad.

▲

SchemaLoad 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

The speed and spread of nonsense is accelerating. Within a day the story about youtube view counts spread with hundreds of angry comments about youtube and enshitification.

People are getting ragebaited repeatedly on a scale that is new. Not that misinformation in general is new

	▲	bethekidyouwant 5 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I’m not sure about that is there’s something that could’ve happened in the 60s that is so oddly technical, yet understood by millions of people? that it could be misinterpreted and spread like this: add block users mistaken as bots? It would just sound like gobbledygook to someone in the 1960s.
	▲	brookst 4 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Nonsense is just a subset of information; the speed of information is absolutely accelerating.