It’s gone forever obviously, but in 2015 during breaking news you could turn on CNN, you could check the mono-Twitter timeline and maybe the left/right wings of online discourse and have a pretty good read on what “reality” was, but now everything is so fragmented it’s hard to know what’s what.
And there are too many agents with multiple agendas flooding everything with disinformation now as well.
Yes. To be honest. I follow four people closely on bluesky. I get their take -then I go read the WAPO and NYT and that is where you can really see the glossover. I follow two lawyers, a military/russian expert, a finance reporter(kai) and he always follows Carl so I get good info IMO
Intelligent people can ascertain something approaching objective reality. It’s just that the only thing that matters now is “takes.” Personally I’m getting ever closer to reverting to my former left libertarian survivalist form, never to be heard from again.
I was talking to somebody the other day about it. I feel like I’m back in college, writing a paper because I feel like I need to see it more than one time. I don’t watch the world news anymore, just the local.
PBS newsHour will always do you right.
And paywalled. The Information Superhighway became a toll road.
I also believe that everyone vastly underestimates the percent of posts, esp in comments, that are paid/fake. Whether influence ops, traffic drivers, or just MFA (clicks for cash.) Social media is more or less AI slop now. Follow only trusted accounts, and be suspicious of all commenters.
I follow about 10 people between here and twitter and just load their individual pages. I never look at any algorithmic feeds. Have never used insta, tiktok, etc.
The thing where blue checkmarks went from a verification to a paid signal boost was a paradigm shift with nothing else to shift to. Not good.
Return to CNN Headline News with Rudi Bakhtiar.
They should have kept Robin Meade for the morning show instead of their ever changing lineup.
I’ve found that sadly I have to depend on Drudge Report as my breaking news source.
“now everything is so fragmented it’s hard to know what’s what.” That’s not really accurate. Just ignore social media and you’ll have a pretty accurate view.
This is probably the biggest failure of the new information structure (news via TikTok, X, FB, Substack, individual bloggers, etc.) -- lack of consolidation as "news." Because it IS news, just not accessible enough.
The monoculture had been dying for a while, but I think TikTok and its For You page officially killed it in 2020.
I honestly don’t even know what outlets are worth paying attention to. We’re in the dark.
Seems intentional
Kind of. But in today’s world you can pretty much assume that whatever Fox is saying is 180 degrees from reality.
The thing is that it's become more vexatiously labor-intensive to find out what's what- for no good reason- and to be clear this is deplorable all on its own... but I still don't think it's nearly as hard as some people make it look!
How can you be totally sure the version of reality you’ve discovered is the correct one though? It’s up to your own judgment, but most people think they have good judgment.
It's completely fair to say that I'm still vulnerable to some extent- I don't know what I don't know, and all that. But I can see people who didn't know or claim not to know what Project 2025 entailed, or whether Trump would be worse on Gaza than Harris, e.g., and observe that I know more than they!
If we want to get really philosophical re: my "version of reality" then there's always the possibility that I'm being deceived by malevolent force no matter how curious I try to be, how earnestly I try to curate my information sources, etc. But that way madness lies.