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Why the Guardian is no longer posting on X

(www.theguardian.com)
243 points Jimmc414 | 8 comments | 13 Nov 24 20:58 UTC | HN request time: 1.601s | source | bottom
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lend000 ◴[13 Nov 24 21:49 UTC] 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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result2vino ◴[13 Nov 24 22:22 UTC] 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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lend000 ◴[14 Nov 24 00:28 UTC] 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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1. consteval ◴[14 Nov 24 16:12 UTC] No.42137635[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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2. lend000 ◴[14 Nov 24 17:23 UTC] No.42138567[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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3. consteval ◴[14 Nov 24 17:53 UTC] No.42138971[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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4. lend000 ◴[14 Nov 24 20:09 UTC] No.42140621{3}[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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5. consteval ◴[14 Nov 24 20:45 UTC] No.42141023{4}[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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6. lend000 ◴[14 Nov 24 23:45 UTC] No.42142534{5}[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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7. consteval ◴[15 Nov 24 01:12 UTC] No.42143031{6}[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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8. lend000 ◴[15 Nov 24 02:23 UTC] No.42143414{7}[source]▶
> Twitter is a dumpster fire and algorithms purposefully boost the most toxic content

Proceeds to be extremely toxic.

@dang