Hacker News Reader

Comment by winternett | Hacker News Reader

Like the entire Internet now... Got it.

These apps don't allow for people to choose the content they see. Even the front page of CNN.Com is regularly now citing TikTok clips that went "viral". In the next few years there will be no way to avoid this staged and shilled content anywhere. Especially as monopoly platforms begin to collaborate with each other to create marketing campaigns.

Suggestive/manipulative marketing has a stranglehold on the Internet without most people knowing. Things displayed on site front pages are there for a reason, and it's not usually because it naturally went viral, it's there because it makes companies a lot of money.... The real content, made by authentic people is buried by algorithms and under a sea of staged and copycat content. (Just my opinion though)

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> Like the entire Internet now

Not even close. There are plenty of places on the Internet that are not infected with this trash. (This site is one of them: nobody has to wade through videos and ads just to post here.) It is unfortunate that so-called "mainstream news" sites like CNN are not among them, but that's CNN's problem.

Give me a good example, and I'll give you an example in that instance where you're wrong. If sites are not currently contaminated by fake and staged content, I guarantee you they soon will be.

News sources previously reporting on and praising crypto companies and coins that have now been exposed as scams (now gone bankrupt) is a troubling sign that even journalism is relying on likes for reputation more than properly checking sources.

Many influencers pushed crypto heavily in the past years, leading to huge money losses for people who follow them. There has still never been proper public account for how this social media content cycle mentally manipulates people regularly.

> Give me a good example

I already gave you one: this very site.

> a troubling sign that even journalism is relying on likes for reputation more than properly checking sources.

So-called journalism has been in that mode for decades, if not centuries. If anything, the Internet makes it harder for them to keep it up, because there are so many more ways for their practices to actually be exposed so people can see them. That might make it seem like journalists do more of that kind of thing than they used to, but it doesn't; it just means that they get caught at it a lot more than they used to.

> There has still never been proper public account for how this social media content cycle mentally manipulates people regularly.

Social media can only mentally manipulate you if you're naive enough to (a) use it, and (b) believe what you see on it. No amount of "public account" is going to fix that problem.

> I already gave you one: this very site.

Hacker News is almost entirely influencer marketing, and has been from the very beginning. The whole point is to push Y Combinator the angel investment company.

> Hacker News is almost entirely influencer marketing

Really? That's what this discussion is? Or, for that matter, every discussion I have participated in in the 10 years or so I have been posting on HN? Are we both posting on the same site?

I get that the existence of HN gives publicity to YC, and that every so often pg or sama posts a new essay and those always make it to the front page. But to call the site itself "almost entirely influencer marketing" seems to me to be, to say the least, highly inaccurate.

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