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243 points Jimmc414 | 23 comments | | HN request time: 0.431s | source | bottom
1. lend000 ◴[] No.42130419[source]
It's wild how much most people rely on being in an echo chamber. It takes a psychological toll being confronted with opinions that challenge your worldview on a regular basis, especially if you cannot easily dismiss them.

I haven't seen any of the things the Guardian mentions on my feed -- it's mostly startup related, software related, finance news, and science/medical stuff with maybe ~10% of posts I come across having a political tinge (I do not seek out any political discourse in my feed). But this ratio hasn't changed much in the last few years, except that the flavor of political content has moved rightward (it started off pretty left, which I also did not seek out).

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2. grahamj ◴[] No.42130714[source]
For me it's not about the content. What would take a psychological toll is knowing I'm supporting the orange idiot's #1 fluffer.
3. result2vino ◴[] No.42130807[source]
I’m sick to death of everything being described as “opinions that challenge one’s worldview”. There are opinions and there are opinions. There are also philosophical differences of opinion vs things that blatantly factually untrue. Remember “alternative facts”? from the last US election? That was a thing that someone legitimately said in response to specific tangible factually incorrect statements being made about the nature of election fraud. Not wanting to be exposed to content from a news organisation that so aggressively promotes this “worldview” is not the same thing as being a thin-skinned snowflake that only wants to consume content that doesn’t challenge them.

The notion that I’m meant to ingest some unfiltered firehose of utter garbage because of some incorrect notion of “all opinions are equally valid” is complete and utter bullshit.

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4. Sol2Sol ◴[] No.42130876[source]
I can't high-five this enough.
5. standardUser ◴[] No.42130887[source]
Opinions are one thing. X has become a bastion of conspiracy theories and outright fabrications with it's hyper-partisan owner leading the charge.
6. unethical_ban ◴[] No.42130945[source]
You say "it's wild" and then give a reasonable explanation in the next sentence. Is it wild, or not?

And are you implying that the Guardian is being "run off" because it wants X to be an echo chamber? You don't think it's a bot-infested hellhole of hate, but some den of thoughtful, nuanced, balanced discussion?

7. throw16180339 ◴[] No.42131092[source]
> It's wild how much most people rely on being in an echo chamber. It takes a psychological toll being confronted with opinions that challenge your worldview on a regular basis, especially if you cannot easily dismiss them.

I can easily dismiss antisemitic conspiracy theories, queerphobia, bigotry, and racism. There's an infinite stream of garbage positions, why would would I engage with them?

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8. UltraSane ◴[] No.42131510[source]
I don't mind opinions that challenge my worldview. I despise complete lies like what Alex Jones spews.
9. lend000 ◴[] No.42131798[source]
Is your X feed an unfiltered firehose of utter garbage? Mine isn't. That really only speaks to the fact that the algorithm finds that you are more likely to engage with garbage.
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10. lend000 ◴[] No.42131806[source]
As I mentioned in a sibling comment, your feed is only toxic insofar you are likely to engage with it. I have never seen a single post on my feed of the vein you are describing.

By the way, there is equally ridiculous garbage on the left, if you go looking for it. You are doing the same thing that every partisan media outlet does, the oldest trick in the book: arguing against a strawman. Just because there is some leftist out there who wants to subsidize transgender operations for illegal immigrants or who wants to cancel anyone who assumes your gender, should I generalize that opinion to you and every left-leaning person on HN?

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11. grahamj ◴[] No.42132152{3}[source]
You really need to think this through more than "my feed is fine"
12. throw16180339 ◴[] No.42132591{3}[source]
Elon endorsed antisemitic comments (https://www.politico.eu/article/elon-musk-row-uk-rishi-sunak...) and conspiracy theories. Several studies found that there was a substantial increase in hate speech (https://www.newsguardtech.com/special-reports/twitter-misinf...) after the acquisition. He substantially manipulated opinions on X to serve his own ends, most recently during the election. It's grossly misleading to compare this to a strawman.
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13. consteval ◴[] No.42137635{3}[source]
There're multiple problems here. If your feed was utter garbage, would you be able to tell? How often do you fact check tweets? For most people, I suspect it's close to never.
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14. consteval ◴[] No.42137651{3}[source]
> your feed is only toxic insofar you are likely to engage with it.

Right, and bigotry raises engagement. This isn't rocket science. Garbage opinions get popular because of how garbage they are. It's the same reason why traffic slows down when there's a car wreck on the other side of the interstate.

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15. lend000 ◴[] No.42138567{4}[source]
> If your feed was utter garbage, would you be able to tell?

Lol. Same way as you or anyone else calling it utter garbage.

As another comment on this thread points out, this is exactly what the Community Notes feature is for, and it's the real reason why the Guardian has been having such a rough time on X.

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16. consteval ◴[] No.42138971{5}[source]
Right, by fact checking. If you fact check Elon's tweets and retweets, pretty much none of them are true. He, however, still has a large backing because the propaganda he promotes happens to be popular.

I don't know the true reason the Guardian left X. But I do know X is overrun with disinformation, racism, and outright reality denial. I left twitter a while ago, so I'm not in a position to judge the guardian.

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17. lend000 ◴[] No.42140621{6}[source]
> If you fact check Elon's tweets and retweets, pretty much none of them are true

As someone who purports to care so much about facts, how can you open with this statement? This sort of behavior is why Trump won in a landslide -- people are voting against this sort of cognitive dissonance disguised as arrogance, not for Trump.

> But I do know X is overrun with disinformation, racism, and outright reality denial. > I left twitter a while ago

Okay. I'm picking up on a common theme amongst all the armchair experts on X -- they aren't on it and only know what has been cherry picked by their own hyper-partisan media outlets.

Let's assume Elon is quite right wing and the vast majority of his personal posts are opinions masquerading as facts. Did you know you can unfollow him? How is this worse than where you get your news? I'll tell you -- in many cases, you don't know who owns your news source of choice and you don't know their agenda, but they surely have one. So basically, X is a more decentralized information system with more transparency.

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18. consteval ◴[] No.42141023{7}[source]
> As someone who purports to care so much about facts, how can you open with this statement?

You just answered it, lol. Because I care about facts.

> people are voting against this sort of cognitive dissonance disguised as arrogance, not for Trump.

Right, the arrogance of pointing out things that are blatantly untrue. If you're trying to paint your side as anything but bumbling idiots, you're not doing a very good job.

The really fun thing about Trump supporters this go around is that they pretty much shoot themselves in the foot whenever they can.

Virtually every Trump supporter I know considers him a liar. The leftists I know don't - they actually have more respect for him. But Trump supporters will defend him constantly with "he doesn't mean that" or "he meant it as a joke" or whatever.

Your defense is that the person you support is not evil, but just a liar? In fact, they vote for him under the assumption that he won't be able to execute most of his plans, and they'll fall through. Their faith in him is paradoxically based on complete non-belief. It's very interesting to me.

Musk is in a similar position. His defenders proclaim his innocence by requiting his crimes on the grounds of abject stupidity. That doesn't do much to convince me.

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19. lend000 ◴[] No.42142534{8}[source]
Ironically, you're attacking someone who is neither a Trump apologist nor voter. There are more than 2 uniform perspectives in the global stage of ideas. I imagine it's easier to argue with an imaginary Trump supporter (like you spent most of your comment doing) than engage civilly with the questions I posed you. Maybe you could use a break from the comments sections...
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20. consteval ◴[] No.42143031{9}[source]
I never attacked you, I said, quote "trump supporters" and "musk defenders". Do you identify with that? Because on one hand you say no, and on the other you say yes.

I answered your questions as best I could, but to be honest, I have very little patience on account of how stupid the questions were. I mean, it's not exactly groundbreaking news that Twitter is a dumpster fire and algorithms purposefully boost the most toxic content.

I'm working under the assumption you're playing stupid, which is actually rather charitable of me. The alternative would that you just are stupid.

But, because today I feel extra generous, I'll answer your incredibly naive question:

> Did you know you can unfollow him? How is this worse than where you get your news?

Social Media like X is specifically engineered to keep you on it via engagement. This means rage bait.

I know this because I've tried, very hard, to scrub my socials of politics. I am very disciplined, but even for me it is impossible. No matter what, I will get some pinhead saying women shouldn't vote or black people are genetically inferior. I can unfollow, I can click "not interested", doesn't matter.

The algorithm will, eventually, go back into showing me the most vile content imaginable, almost always extreme right-wing content.

The reason why is obvious - this content is extremely controversial and garners the most retention. Nobody cares about rainbows and butterflies, they care about skinheads and rapists.

The news, at least, does not feature this kind of content. The news, also, typically does not outright lie. Musk outright lies, almost always, but he's one example. If you go through the timeline of the typical right-wing pundit, almost none of their tweets are true.

The news isn't going to tell me Haitian immigrants are eating cats and dogs. Twitter, and evidently the president elect, will.

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21. lend000 ◴[] No.42143414{10}[source]
> Twitter is a dumpster fire and algorithms purposefully boost the most toxic content

Proceeds to be extremely toxic.

@dang

22. southernplaces7 ◴[] No.42146487{4}[source]
>Garbage opinions get popular because of how garbage they are

What a neatly convenient and circular argument for completely dismissing anything that gains appeal but you happen to dislike. It must be popular because it's garbage, and couldn't possibly have any parts worth examining.

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23. consteval ◴[] No.42148102{5}[source]
It's just the truth, sorry to be the one to tell you.

The more garbage an opinion is the more outrage it causes. This means more engagement, more comments, more replies, more stitches, more views, more everything. This means creators are incentivized to make this content, and the "algorithms" purposefully promote this content too. Because, objectively, it does very well. Much better than tame or normal content.

It's not just "what I happen to dislike", lol, it's everything. Sure, there's skinheads and such on the right who say blatantly racist or sexist stuff. Some of them are even in Congress (MTG). But on the left, you have those cringe compilations with "blue hair" feminists. I'm a feminist, but I don't agree with those people.

Of course, neither is truly representative of "their side" or, really, anyone. They're just insane wackos. But those opinions garner A LOT of attention, because they're garbage.