"The top source of news for Americans is no longer TV; it's social media." (https://helloimatthews.blogspot.com/search/label/Social%20Media)
Well, yes. Since media companies don't give us a choice. I'd much rather have RSS feeds that I can customize to my own app/reader, but most everyone killed RSS feeds years ago and just link to social media posts.
Since the usual media outlets are either being used as propaganda machines or are being silenced and sued when they try to bring unbiased news, what do you expect?
Well, when all they tell you is lies on television and written media, you have to go to another source. Personally, I hope every one of the current news stations goes under. None of them are telling us any REAL news, it's all just a bunch of biased lies.
54 is above average, but it is not 100%, it will never be 100% because there are people who do not know how to use the internet and also for other factors.
For all of the limitations and deficiencies of mainstream news, it remains the best source of valid information about current events. Studies I've seen have shown that those who rely on that source are better informed than those who consume Fox News, and I suspect that the same is true of Rogan viewers and others who rely on similar sources.
The reason for that situation isn't complicated. Mainstream sources have extensive protocols and editing procedures intended to ensure a level of accuracy in reporting. Social media and similar on-line channels don't, and in that sense they are essentially parasitic on standard news sources. Without that material, neither they nor their audiences would have anything to talk about. At the same time, these less rigorous channels inevitably impose a distorting "filter" on that information.
It's not all that hard to be well informed. A yearly digital subscription to the Times, for example, costs $25 every four weeks; a similar Post subscription is $170 a year (both figures full price after one-year reduced introductory rate). Those rates are well within the financial capability of far more Americans than choose to take advantage of those sources. Such people are choosing to be less informed -- or even to be actively deceived, as with Fox viewers.
I really would like to make a guide to understanding media around current events. People just cannot differentiate between types of reporting, types of analysis, and when each is appropriate.
I feel like some of the responsibility has to rest with the consumer. I'm not even a Facebook user and I know that if you "watch[] one reel with that type of content" you're going to keep seeing more. Regardless of the subject matter, it doesn't strike me as particularly difficult to say, "I'm using an entertainment tool, best to take everything with a grain of salt and a slice of skepticism."
The article is about news, not entertainment. Journalism used to have ethical standards of telling truth. Broadcasters in the USA used to have the FCC’s fairness doctrine. A functioning democracy depends on an informed public. Even though there have always been con men, religious zealots, etc., they were limited to fringe media. Now, they’re not. And they’re being boosted by algorithms.
Facebook is an entertainment source. That's the point. Don't consider it an option for learning the news of the day. Don't rely upon any information you're exposed to through it without finding reliable, professional sources that independently confirm it. Etc.
No. Facebook does not defend itself by saying it’s an entertainment source. (That’s what Fox did). Facebook’s position is that it is a content neutral platform with virtually no editorial duties.
But the spat has exposed what journalists and ethicists say are fundamental flaws in the way Facebook controls and spreads news. Critics say the company’s decisions were driven by PR concerns and should serve as a wake-up call to free speech advocates about how powerful Facebook has become– and how ill-equipped the corporation is for its role, however unwilling, in journalism.
Some hope the scandal will be a turning point for CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who critics say has a moral obligation to recognize his role as the “world’s most powerful editor” and take meaningful steps to make Facebook accountable for what it distributes.
“What Facebook has to do now is think very hard about what it really means to be a publisher,” said Emily Bell, director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University. “If they don’t,” she warned, “this is going to happen to them over and over again.”
‘We need more than just algorithms’ Whether Facebook and media executives like to admit it, the social media site now plays a vital role in how people consume news, carrying an influence that is difficult to overstate. Studies have repeatedly found that Facebook has become the primary news source for many people, and that publishers’ revenues have been hit hard as a result.
Kind of? It uses your brain's mechanisms against you. That's not exactly an excuse, but you need to make a concerted effort to stay away from it, and that can be hard when you derive benefits from it too.
A dopamine hit doesn't eliminate our critical thinking skills though. One can spend all the time they want on Facebook and still be suspect of the information they gather there.
Sure, but they've hacked and weaponized our need for dopamine hits against us.
Everyone in the US knows that the key to better health and losing weight is moderate exercise and eating more fruits and vegetables--but Pringles and Chik-fil-A is just too tasty and easy. And this goes for every country.
At some point the heroin dealer has some responsibility.
I think the major point here is that people don’t seem to really value original reporting, though I suppose one could also read it as the quality of reporting isn’t worth it. (That is to say, a five byline piece in the NYT probably has some value - the local news reporting live from a traffic accident less so)
I was thinking that the headline was off, and should more accurately read along the lines of "Majority of Americans Prefer Opinion to News." I don't think the issue is the quality of reporting, however, given how many people don't read it enough to fairly judge and the fact that it's what the opinion broadcasters with whom they choose to engage rely upon. It seems more likely due to laziness and the consequent uncured ignorance - the desire for prechewed information that's easier to swallow. And, if I can get it without having to deviate from my preferred source of entertainment, it's all the better.
FOX learned this a long time ago and barely has any straight news staff. Just enough to put in front of a green screen. Tell me a major story broken first by FOX. I can't think of one (I'm sure there's a few, but not many).
Fox found that outrage-based opinion is cheap, profitable, and drives viewership far more than actual news. Podcasters learned that with a couple microphones they can make similar content for hardly anything and make that money for themselves.
I don’t think it’s safe to assume that they aren’t consuming a lot of news.
I think you end up with three groups:
News junkies (like TAD, arguably) where their point of entry is social media but they do consume a lot of news indirectly. I would argue that they’re probably more informed and more opinionated than the average CBS Evening News viewer. I think there is also a parallel to early stage Wikipedia where the crowd sourcing aspect pulls in more breadth and depth than traditional sources, but you need to apply a bit of skepticism.
The above, but without the skepticism, which leads down rabbit holes and into conspiracy theories.
People who only incidentally consume news as an unintended byproduct of consuming social media focused on something else.
Twitter was (is?) also a good example of point one. If you could sort though the dreck it gave unparalleled access to the news in real time, often from experts with much deeper background and context than the average reporter.
However, sorting through the dreck required a decent amount of work and skepticism, and without it the overall experience was worse than nothing.
Sure, but even if you read the NYT, how much of it is actual first order investigative reporting, rather than recapping/contextualizing either press conferences or government data releases?
Like, if the Supreme Court releases an opinion, the actual bare facts are already there in the decision, and the rest of it is context. Similarly, for things like inflation data or reading the tea leaves in the Fed.
Even for something like the Air India crash, how much is actual reporting versus expert interviews to contextualize it or hypothesize on causes that will eventually be determined by the FAA and their Indian equivalent?
The really niche stuff (not applicable to Rogan, etc., though I do think somewhat applicable to "social media as news feed") is where people can go straight to the source of the news and cut out the middleman.
This is especially true for research/academic type stuff,* but even for breaking news you have open source intelligence type activities along the lines of Belling Cat where you can hear directly from the people making the news and doing the investigations without the middleman.
But this is really only applicable for a subset of group 1 in the above comment.
*Why read the Vox summary of a paper when you can just read the author of the paper?
I don't think they do. I constantly see people claiming that a certain topic is being ignored by the media or not covered by the media, when a quick glance at any contemporaneous news source will show many, many stories on that exact topic.
For example, Jeffrey Epstein related stories. If you go on social media you would get the impression that discussion of his case is taboo or somehow hidden from the public but if you check basically any news site you will see that it's received extensive coverage whenever there's any development in any related case. I'm sure some of the people claiming that the story is not covered by the media are lying, but I suspect many of them just genuinely have no idea.
They only get their news from instagram and maybe TikTok and they often don't follow anyone who covers news, so if something isn't covered in a makeup tutorial or an unboxing video then it's unknowable to them.
lmao we're so fucked breathes into paper bag https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fexternal-preview.redd.it%2Fc15iFsfnohpIlMnGq0GW_B5HEMVXNOMo14HOCSzpjAU.gif%3Fauto%3Dwebp%26s%3D8d7dea6a6a23c8d3ac3b1ce82d94675749b7ae51
On Sunday, the The New York Times business section had this page one story https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/13/technology/chatgpt-ai-chatbots-conspiracies.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Ok8.gmU7.-T5HtQevkmbk (gift link) about people who took chatbots literally enough they become dangerously disconnected from reality, in other words adjacent to mental illness. And these people were over 25.
People are so addicted to convenience they sacrifice any semblance of effort or brain usage.
Honestly that might be an improvement since AI won't have an incentive to lie. Hallucinations are probably far less harmful than misinformation. I'm being optimistic of course, it's just as likely people will tailor these things to only cater to their version of reality
Except Russian bot farms have shifted from social media manipulation to feeding AI chatbots prompts/info/sources etc that regurgitate responses that they want western idiots to read.
AI is trained on reddit and there is a lot of reddit posts & data that got sucked up when they stole everything into their models. Do you want r/all https://www.reddit.com/r/all/ as the predictive text influencing news consumption?
I never had a ton of optimism for the average person.. I didn't expect my peers to read the Economist cover to cover or listen to BBC in their car for an hour each day.
But... FFS. Not surprising in light of current events but FFS. I really thought people were better than this before 2016.
Regarding "before 2016": I'm starting off summer reading season with some nonfiction from my early years. Last week I finished Post-Intellectualism and the Decline of Democracy https://archive.org/details/postintellectual0000wood_d2l8 (1996) by Donald N. Wood. Turns out the decline had been decades in the making even while the current P[OS]OTUS was still in military school. For example, SAT verbal scores began declining in the early 1960s, (https://archive.org/details/postintellectual0000wood_d2l8/page/68/mode/2up?q=%22verbal+scores+for+college-bound+high%22) which the author attributes to "the correlation of the drop in scores with the period when the TV generation came fully of age." (https://archive.org/details/postintellectual0000wood_d2l8/page/70/mode/2up?q=%22TV+generation+came+fully+of+age%22)
But at least in the '90s, there were enough popular first-hand memories of Depression and WWII to provide adequate "adult supervision" to our politics and culture. Hence why AMC was really about "American Movie Classics" and the History Channel had actual History (compared to whatever they've become now).
Now I'm re-reading The Assault on Reason (2007) (https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780143113621/) by Al Gore, having read it the first time in (I think) late 2008 when I was a high school senior. To be honest, I kinda miss the days when "Saddam Hussein caused 9/11" was popular opinion, because there wasn't yet the ability to spread that nonsense in milliseconds to everyone's social media feeds or mobile phones.
The Vice President Emeritus criticized commercial television for "imposing barriers to entry that exclude contributions from most citizens." (https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780143113621/page/16/mode/2up?q=%22imposing+barriers+to+entry+that+exclude%22) Well, I wonder how he'd evaluate the "contributions from most citizens" to Facebook and X. (It's easy to blame "bots", but perhaps the output from "real people" is showing why those "imposing barriers" existed to begin with.)
Appreciate the thoughtful response and links. I never read Assault on Reason but I think I'll check it out. I was just getting out of the Navy around that time. I enlisted full of patriotism following 9/11 but then 2003 and Freedom Fries and that bullshit came along and it was one giant slap in the face.
I was dumb in 2000 and voted for Nader, whom I still respected at that time. The least I can do is buy Al's book!
Thanks. Come to think of it, Myspace was often criticized in its heyday, but at least it was never accused of being a major source political misinformation!
I went to school for journalism and all the old guard, guest speakers we had kept talking about the importance of neutrality and how they were seeing a trend in new journalists of prioritizing using their position to push a cause over the truth. This was 15 years ago and they warned that if the media lost wide spread trust the news would devolve into a propaganda war worse than the yellow journalism days.
As shitty as mainstream media too often is (such as *ake *apper), I haven't seen a consistently better alternative.
Last month, The Wall Street Journal had an exploration (https://archive.ph/riY2F) of social media influencers and bloggers providing alternative coverage of the Sean Combs trial. One blogger is quoted saying that audiences "want new media to be more salacious". The reporter found that self-published media was "often heavy on personal impressions and suspicions, and short on such traditional journalism staples as fact-checking and comments from all sides."
15 years ago it would be easy for you and I to say "the media shouldn't be a marketing arm of one party over the other." But when one party is so, so far off the fact rails, what can be done?
"One blogger is quoted saying that audiences "want new media to be more salacious".
The pro wrestlingification of news. People want President Hogan with 24-inch pythons saying how he's going to body slam the Iron Sheik to take away their nukes.
To be fair, I don’t exactly trust any of the “mainstream” media places anymore since they all instantly had stories ready to go about Biden needing to step down after the debate, and then all the covering for Trump they’ve done, settling lawsuits and firing reporters who openly criticize the Trump administration. I absolutely hate that the world has turned upside down and now conspiracy theory stuff is real and I’m going to protests. Trump ruins everything.
This is exactly why it matters what people are saying on Reddit and on threads and on Facebook in all the comment sections everywhere. Because this is now people's primary source of information.
Discourse is real now instead of just being a sideshow for the terminally online
And now all it is is clickbait headlines and when you try to read an article, it's behind paywalls or they go, "You have to sign up for our special club if you wanna keep reading"
100% The hollowing out of newsrooms, especially editors, is part of why we're here as well. Journalism requires reporting, not just analysis/commentary
I searched on Google, 54% of people use social networks as their main source, it's more than 50% but it's still not much, right? For approximately 8.11 billion people that exist on the face of the earth.
"The top source of news for Americans is no longer TV; it's social media." (https://helloimatthews.blogspot.com/search/label/Social%20Media)
ReplyDeleteWell, yes. Since media companies don't give us a choice. I'd much rather have RSS feeds that I can customize to my own app/reader, but most everyone killed RSS feeds years ago and just link to social media posts.
Yeah right, entire world is in America now…. Goodluck America 😑
ReplyDeleteImagine getting your news from a "TikTok influencer" or someone like Joe Rogan, no wonder why their country is like that.
ReplyDeleteThat’s so sad. Probably why fascism is on the rise.
ReplyDeleteSince the usual media outlets are either being used as propaganda machines or are being silenced and sued when they try to bring unbiased news, what do you expect?
ReplyDeleteIt is working out wonderfully...
ReplyDeletewho can blame them. The corporate media has shown they are biased, deceptive and dishonest. The Media has no one to blame but themselves.
ReplyDeleteyes maga, whatever you say. And above all else remember trump never lies
Deleteproving the point
DeleteWell, when all they tell you is lies on television and written media, you have to go to another source. Personally, I hope every one of the current news stations goes under. None of them are telling us any REAL news, it's all just a bunch of biased lies.
ReplyDeleteYes, and Fox should be the first to go.
Deletewhy not? We already know social media can lie as well as th3 MSM...
ReplyDeleteexplains why everyone is so utterly misinformed and dumb
ReplyDeleteand they wonder why Americans are ignorant
ReplyDeleteLol. Only to the naive
ReplyDelete54%
ReplyDeletehttps://tribune.com.pk/story/2551262/majority-of-americans-receive-their-news-from-social-media-according-to-study
54 is above average, but it is not 100%, it will never be 100% because there are people who do not know how to use the internet and also for other factors.
DeleteNot surprising at all — traditional news is either behind a paywall or biased. Social media is fast and free.
ReplyDeleteThat's kind of scary. Social media is full of misinformation and echo chambers.
ReplyDeleteI get my news on Twitter… but I also double-check it with actual news outlets.
ReplyDeleteThis is why media literacy should be taught in schools
ReplyDeleteHonestly, I only see news on TikTok now. It's weird, but it works.
ReplyDeletePeople trust influencers more than journalists now — that says a lot about trust in institutions.
ReplyDeleteNo wonder conspiracy theories spread so fast
ReplyDeleteSocial media is just faster than TV or newspapers. We want updates now, not tonight at 6.
ReplyDeleteIndeed
DeleteI still prefer NPR or BBC. Social media's just too chaotic.
ReplyDeleteThis is either the evolution of news or the beginning of the end. Maybe both.
ReplyDeleteWell, that's not worrisome.
ReplyDeleteYou mean electing a proven beyond a reasonable doubt thirty-four times over fraud isn't rock bottom?
DeleteIt can always get worse!
DeleteFor all of the limitations and deficiencies of mainstream news, it remains the best source of valid information about current events. Studies I've seen have shown that those who rely on that source are better informed than those who consume Fox News, and I suspect that the same is true of Rogan viewers and others who rely on similar sources.
ReplyDeleteThe reason for that situation isn't complicated. Mainstream sources have extensive protocols and editing procedures intended to ensure a level of accuracy in reporting. Social media and similar on-line channels don't, and in that sense they are essentially parasitic on standard news sources. Without that material, neither they nor their audiences would have anything to talk about. At the same time, these less rigorous channels inevitably impose a distorting "filter" on that information.
It's not all that hard to be well informed. A yearly digital subscription to the Times, for example, costs $25 every four weeks; a similar Post subscription is $170 a year (both figures full price after one-year reduced introductory rate). Those rates are well within the financial capability of far more Americans than choose to take advantage of those sources. Such people are choosing to be less informed -- or even to be actively deceived, as with Fox viewers.
I really would like to make a guide to understanding media around current events. People just cannot differentiate between types of reporting, types of analysis, and when each is appropriate.
ReplyDeleteFacebook’s algorithms for reels are atrocious.
ReplyDeleteThey send people into bizarre mental worlds.
Just yesterday I calmly confronted a pretty regular guy (with a Latina wife) who has gone off the deep end in anti-immigrant bullshit.
If a person watches one reel with that type of content, Facebook shows them dozens more.
I feel like some of the responsibility has to rest with the consumer. I'm not even a Facebook user and I know that if you "watch[] one reel with that type of content" you're going to keep seeing more. Regardless of the subject matter, it doesn't strike me as particularly difficult to say, "I'm using an entertainment tool, best to take everything with a grain of salt and a slice of skepticism."
DeleteThe article is about news, not entertainment. Journalism used to have ethical standards of telling truth. Broadcasters in the USA used to have the FCC’s fairness doctrine. A functioning democracy depends on an informed public. Even though there have always been con men, religious zealots, etc., they were limited to fringe media. Now, they’re not. And they’re being boosted by algorithms.
DeleteFacebook is an entertainment source. That's the point. Don't consider it an option for learning the news of the day. Don't rely upon any information you're exposed to through it without finding reliable, professional sources that independently confirm it. Etc.
DeleteNo. Facebook does not defend itself by saying it’s an entertainment source. (That’s what Fox did). Facebook’s position is that it is a content neutral platform with virtually no editorial duties.
Deletehttps://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/sep/10/facebook-news-media-editor-vietnam-photo-censorship
But the spat has exposed what journalists and ethicists say are fundamental flaws in the way Facebook controls and spreads news. Critics say the company’s decisions were driven by PR concerns and should serve as a wake-up call to free speech advocates about how powerful Facebook has become– and how ill-equipped the corporation is for its role, however unwilling, in journalism.
Some hope the scandal will be a turning point for CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who critics say has a moral obligation to recognize his role as the “world’s most powerful editor” and take meaningful steps to make Facebook accountable for what it distributes.
“What Facebook has to do now is think very hard about what it really means to be a publisher,” said Emily Bell, director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University. “If they don’t,” she warned, “this is going to happen to them over and over again.”
‘We need more than just algorithms’ Whether Facebook and media executives like to admit it, the social media site now plays a vital role in how people consume news, carrying an influence that is difficult to overstate. Studies have repeatedly found that Facebook has become the primary news source for many people, and that publishers’ revenues have been hit hard as a result.
Kind of? It uses your brain's mechanisms against you. That's not exactly an excuse, but you need to make a concerted effort to stay away from it, and that can be hard when you derive benefits from it too.
DeleteA dopamine hit doesn't eliminate our critical thinking skills though. One can spend all the time they want on Facebook and still be suspect of the information they gather there.
DeleteSure, but they've hacked and weaponized our need for dopamine hits against us.
DeleteEveryone in the US knows that the key to better health and losing weight is moderate exercise and eating more fruits and vegetables--but Pringles and Chik-fil-A is just too tasty and easy. And this goes for every country.
At some point the heroin dealer has some responsibility.
People eating Pringles, however, don't pretend they're eating Peas. They're aware of the difference.
DeleteA dopamine hit doesn't eliminate our critical thinking skills though.
DeleteNot individually, no, but cumulatively...
I think the major point here is that people don’t seem to really value original reporting, though I suppose one could also read it as the quality of reporting isn’t worth it. (That is to say, a five byline piece in the NYT probably has some value - the local news reporting live from a traffic accident less so)
ReplyDeleteI was thinking that the headline was off, and should more accurately read along the lines of "Majority of Americans Prefer Opinion to News." I don't think the issue is the quality of reporting, however, given how many people don't read it enough to fairly judge and the fact that it's what the opinion broadcasters with whom they choose to engage rely upon. It seems more likely due to laziness and the consequent uncured ignorance - the desire for prechewed information that's easier to swallow. And, if I can get it without having to deviate from my preferred source of entertainment, it's all the better.
DeleteMajority of Americans Prefer Opinion to News
DeleteFOX learned this a long time ago and barely has any straight news staff. Just enough to put in front of a green screen. Tell me a major story broken first by FOX. I can't think of one (I'm sure there's a few, but not many).
Fox found that outrage-based opinion is cheap, profitable, and drives viewership far more than actual news. Podcasters learned that with a couple microphones they can make similar content for hardly anything and make that money for themselves.
There is an element of that, though I think the majority of the curation/digestion is less in the nature of the reporting vs what is covered or not.
DeleteDo people who don't consume a lot of news actually know what's being covered or not though?
DeleteI don’t think it’s safe to assume that they aren’t consuming a lot of news.
DeleteI think you end up with three groups:
News junkies (like TAD, arguably) where their point of entry is social media but they do consume a lot of news indirectly. I would argue that they’re probably more informed and more opinionated than the average CBS Evening News viewer. I think there is also a parallel to early stage Wikipedia where the crowd sourcing aspect pulls in more breadth and depth than traditional sources, but you need to apply a bit of skepticism.
The above, but without the skepticism, which leads down rabbit holes and into conspiracy theories.
People who only incidentally consume news as an unintended byproduct of consuming social media focused on something else.
Twitter was (is?) also a good example of point one. If you could sort though the dreck it gave unparalleled access to the news in real time, often from experts with much deeper background and context than the average reporter.
DeleteHowever, sorting through the dreck required a decent amount of work and skepticism, and without it the overall experience was worse than nothing.
Sure, but even if you read the NYT, how much of it is actual first order investigative reporting, rather than recapping/contextualizing either press conferences or government data releases?
DeleteLike, if the Supreme Court releases an opinion, the actual bare facts are already there in the decision, and the rest of it is context. Similarly, for things like inflation data or reading the tea leaves in the Fed.
Even for something like the Air India crash, how much is actual reporting versus expert interviews to contextualize it or hypothesize on causes that will eventually be determined by the FAA and their Indian equivalent?
The really niche stuff (not applicable to Rogan, etc., though I do think somewhat applicable to "social media as news feed") is where people can go straight to the source of the news and cut out the middleman.
DeleteThis is especially true for research/academic type stuff,* but even for breaking news you have open source intelligence type activities along the lines of Belling Cat where you can hear directly from the people making the news and doing the investigations without the middleman.
But this is really only applicable for a subset of group 1 in the above comment.
*Why read the Vox summary of a paper when you can just read the author of the paper?
DeleteI don't think they do. I constantly see people claiming that a certain topic is being ignored by the media or not covered by the media, when a quick glance at any contemporaneous news source will show many, many stories on that exact topic.
For example, Jeffrey Epstein related stories. If you go on social media you would get the impression that discussion of his case is taboo or somehow hidden from the public but if you check basically any news site you will see that it's received extensive coverage whenever there's any development in any related case. I'm sure some of the people claiming that the story is not covered by the media are lying, but I suspect many of them just genuinely have no idea.
They only get their news from instagram and maybe TikTok and they often don't follow anyone who covers news, so if something isn't covered in a makeup tutorial or an unboxing video then it's unknowable to them.
lmao we're so fucked breathes into paper bag
ReplyDeletehttps://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fexternal-preview.redd.it%2Fc15iFsfnohpIlMnGq0GW_B5HEMVXNOMo14HOCSzpjAU.gif%3Fauto%3Dwebp%26s%3D8d7dea6a6a23c8d3ac3b1ce82d94675749b7ae51
AI chatbots are also becoming increasingly popular as news sources, especially among people under the age of 25.
ReplyDeleteOn Sunday, the The New York Times business section had this page one story https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/13/technology/chatgpt-ai-chatbots-conspiracies.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Ok8.gmU7.-T5HtQevkmbk (gift link) about people who took chatbots literally enough they become dangerously disconnected from reality, in other words adjacent to mental illness. And these people were over 25.
DeletePeople are so addicted to convenience they sacrifice any semblance of effort or brain usage.
Honestly that might be an improvement since AI won't have an incentive to lie. Hallucinations are probably far less harmful than misinformation. I'm being optimistic of course, it's just as likely people will tailor these things to only cater to their version of reality
DeleteExcept Russian bot farms have shifted from social media manipulation to feeding AI chatbots prompts/info/sources etc that regurgitate responses that they want western idiots to read.
DeleteAI is trained on reddit and there is a lot of reddit posts & data that got sucked up when they stole everything into their models. Do you want r/all https://www.reddit.com/r/all/ as the predictive text influencing news consumption?
Delete🤦♂️
ReplyDeleteI never had a ton of optimism for the average person.. I didn't expect my peers to read the Economist cover to cover or listen to BBC in their car for an hour each day.
ReplyDeleteBut... FFS. Not surprising in light of current events but FFS. I really thought people were better than this before 2016.
Regarding "before 2016": I'm starting off summer reading season with some nonfiction from my early years. Last week I finished Post-Intellectualism and the Decline of Democracy https://archive.org/details/postintellectual0000wood_d2l8 (1996) by Donald N. Wood. Turns out the decline had been decades in the making even while the current P[OS]OTUS was still in military school. For example, SAT verbal scores began declining in the early 1960s, (https://archive.org/details/postintellectual0000wood_d2l8/page/68/mode/2up?q=%22verbal+scores+for+college-bound+high%22) which the author attributes to "the correlation of the drop in scores with the period when the TV generation came fully of age." (https://archive.org/details/postintellectual0000wood_d2l8/page/70/mode/2up?q=%22TV+generation+came+fully+of+age%22)
DeleteBut at least in the '90s, there were enough popular first-hand memories of Depression and WWII to provide adequate "adult supervision" to our politics and culture. Hence why AMC was really about "American Movie Classics" and the History Channel had actual History (compared to whatever they've become now).
Now I'm re-reading The Assault on Reason (2007) (https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780143113621/) by Al Gore, having read it the first time in (I think) late 2008 when I was a high school senior. To be honest, I kinda miss the days when "Saddam Hussein caused 9/11" was popular opinion, because there wasn't yet the ability to spread that nonsense in milliseconds to everyone's social media feeds or mobile phones.
The Vice President Emeritus criticized commercial television for "imposing barriers to entry that exclude contributions from most citizens." (https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780143113621/page/16/mode/2up?q=%22imposing+barriers+to+entry+that+exclude%22) Well, I wonder how he'd evaluate the "contributions from most citizens" to Facebook and X. (It's easy to blame "bots", but perhaps the output from "real people" is showing why those "imposing barriers" existed to begin with.)
Appreciate the thoughtful response and links. I never read Assault on Reason but I think I'll check it out. I was just getting out of the Navy around that time. I enlisted full of patriotism following 9/11 but then 2003 and Freedom Fries and that bullshit came along and it was one giant slap in the face.
DeleteI was dumb in 2000 and voted for Nader, whom I still respected at that time. The least I can do is buy Al's book!
Thanks. Come to think of it, Myspace was often criticized in its heyday, but at least it was never accused of being a major source political misinformation!
DeleteA short but impactful supplement to your reading, if you haven't checked it out recently: Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death
DeleteHaha, I read that book in 2012 after hearing a local talk radio host discuss it. I might want to reread it after last year's shitshow.
DeleteI went to school for journalism and all the old guard, guest speakers we had kept talking about the importance of neutrality and how they were seeing a trend in new journalists of prioritizing using their position to push a cause over the truth. This was 15 years ago and they warned that if the media lost wide spread trust the news would devolve into a propaganda war worse than the yellow journalism days.
ReplyDeleteAs shitty as mainstream media too often is (such as *ake *apper), I haven't seen a consistently better alternative.
DeleteLast month, The Wall Street Journal had an exploration (https://archive.ph/riY2F) of social media influencers and bloggers providing alternative coverage of the Sean Combs trial. One blogger is quoted saying that audiences "want new media to be more salacious". The reporter found that self-published media was "often heavy on personal impressions and suspicions, and short on such traditional journalism staples as fact-checking and comments from all sides."
15 years ago it would be easy for you and I to say "the media shouldn't be a marketing arm of one party over the other." But when one party is so, so far off the fact rails, what can be done?
"One blogger is quoted saying that audiences "want new media to be more salacious".
DeleteThe pro wrestlingification of news. People want President Hogan with 24-inch pythons saying how he's going to body slam the Iron Sheik to take away their nukes.
Considering Trump got elected again I don’t have much hope for people.
ReplyDeleteI don’t see how we’re ever going to recover from this.
ReplyDeleteTo be fair, I don’t exactly trust any of the “mainstream” media places anymore since they all instantly had stories ready to go about Biden needing to step down after the debate, and then all the covering for Trump they’ve done, settling lawsuits and firing reporters who openly criticize the Trump administration. I absolutely hate that the world has turned upside down and now conspiracy theory stuff is real and I’m going to protests. Trump ruins everything.
ReplyDeleteGod help us all.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2F9h9mjbnoae7f1.gif%3Fwidth%3D498%26format%3Dmp4%26s%3D8b5e7df0ce65194e54a6866b65506e4be9b3e6df
ReplyDeleteThis is exactly why it matters what people are saying on Reddit and on threads and on Facebook in all the comment sections everywhere. Because this is now people's primary source of information.
ReplyDeleteDiscourse is real now instead of just being a sideshow for the terminally online
And now all it is is clickbait headlines and when you try to read an article, it's behind paywalls or they go, "You have to sign up for our special club if you wanna keep reading"
ReplyDelete"It" as in social media? Professional journalists don't just give their labor away for free.
Delete100% The hollowing out of newsrooms, especially editors, is part of why we're here as well. Journalism requires reporting, not just analysis/commentary
DeleteWhat in the actual fuck?
ReplyDeletehttps://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fexternal-preview.redd.it%2F-Ldeug0URIZHxIxPlsODkxoHmI6NeU4ZhcozRCz3rJM.gif%3Fauto%3Dwebp%26s%3D1e45500ad6c0fa2590945221dfd5d973f597efb4
People want narratives over truth. Tale as old as time unfortunately.
ReplyDeleteAnd that explains why we are doomed.
ReplyDeleteOk. Dems better get on it then. Mainstream media has sucked for a while, which is part of why people go on social media for news and info.
ReplyDeleteI searched on Google, 54% of people use social networks as their main source, it's more than 50% but it's still not much, right? For approximately 8.11 billion people that exist on the face of the earth.
ReplyDeleteI think it's a lie, 54%? It's too little...
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