| ▲ | cesarsk 2 hours ago | |
Why do you think reading news makes you more disinformed? Because it makes you aware of what you don't know enough? | ||
| ▲ | nostrademons 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | |
The sum total of things going on in the world is far more than any one human being can process. The function of the news media (either human or algorithmic) is to cherry-pick the stories that are presented to users. Because they are cherry-picked, they necessarily present a distorted picture of reality. In the days of the big-3 monopoly of broadcast TV, they were usually cherry-picked to support national unity and common American culture; as the news media got more competitive, they started cherry-picking ones that would hold viewer attention ("if it bleeds, it leads"), and then as we switched to Internet news and algorithmic feeds they are algorithmically chosen to maximize engagement. | ||
| ▲ | TeMPOraL an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | |
Because: - in bulk, it creates distorted view of reality, by overemphasizing dramatic events; - individually, approximately half the headlines are bald-faced lies, and the other half merely click bait - articles usually correct the lies in headlines, but in every case I could independently verify, the text was presenting heavily distorted view of the events Some of that can be canceled out by following multiple independent sources, but frankly, doing that is IMO one of the biggest ways to waste your life I can think of. Not worth the effort. Meme sites have similar ROI, and are much more fun. | ||