Comment by riskable | Hacker News Reader

Comment by riskable | Hacker News Reader

Summary: Ground.news puts far too much faith in the legitimacy of many right-wing headlines; giving them front-page views as "blindspots". Meaning: Even though the story itself is complete BS/non-factual, the algorithm shows it as a legitimate thing that isn't being covered by left-leaning or centrist news.

To fix this, Ground.news should update their algorithm to perform much more scrutiny for headlines trending on right-leaning sites. Especially considering that nearly all their right-leaning sources have very low or basically non-existent factuality ratings.

...or just remove (entirely) any "news" source that doesn't have a high factuality rating. That would be the most logical choice but I do sympathize with the fact that would remove nearly all right-leaning "news" sites.

If I were in charge I'd reorient the leanings so that sources like NPR would not show up as "left-leaning" but as centrist (i.e. a more European alignment which is more historically accurate/real, IMHO). Which is where they actually sit (in reality). Sites like Breitbart would be discarded entirely as failing tests of factuality.

I believe the main purpose of Ground News—especially the Blindspot feature—is to highlight what the "other side" is reading, rather than to lend legitimacy to the reported content. I still find that information valuable, but perhaps that distinction could have been made more explicit.

I don't know what to do with that information. "The other side believes absurd new thing" is subsumed by "The other side continuously believes absurd new things", which I already knew -- and already knew that I could not alter that.

It’s really about understanding the broader spectrum. You could assume that what you’re reading is the whole picture—but it’s still useful to see how the existence of these so-called “absurd things” influences and shapes the narratives within the media you do choose to consume.

Sources should really be evaluated on a multi-dimensional axis:

- Factuality (low -> high)

- Partisanship (low -> high)

- Political orientation: social issues (left -> right)

- Political orientation: economic issues (left -> right)

- Political orientation: foreign policy (left -> right)

etc.

Sources like NPR are decisively not centrist w.r.t social issues and partisanship. There has been a distinct change in their reporting over the last ~decade.

(also, I'm aware the left-right scale is very lacking. Economics itself has so many dimensions that left/right is meaningless there.)

It'd be nice, but I can't see it being effective at changing broad consumer behavior. Giving people more information to make a choice doesn't do much value when they're already making poor choices based on the already existing information.

Put another way, I wish we had the nuanced shit to sift through where some nice multi-dimensional analysis could save the day. But the issue is people are consuming shit that is demonstrably shit from the first whiff/taste. I can't see how having some pretty vectors to showing them where their shit lives in shitspace is going to be helpful.

I don't think anyone could (or even necessarily should) design a service like this for the masses. (Designing anything with the masses in mind is probably a way to end up with a mediocre product regardless, but I digress.) This would be more for people like us and the typical HN crowd: interested in truth and nuance for the sake of knowing the world accurately.

The problem with people consuming low-information, rage-baiting, distorted, highly-partisan slop masquerading as news is a problem I don't have the first idea on solving. The issue isn't even with the existence of the shit itself: that sort of content has always and will always exist, regardless. The issue is with (i) the volume of people consuming and accepting it, and more importantly, (ii) how much influence that garbage has on the national discourse and policy. For example, Musk consumes that sort of content and then feeds it into Grok (hello, MechaHitler), which then propagates to elected officials and the electorate and has real-world consequences in policy.

I feel like the whole concept of "left/right", when applied to news reporting especially, just makes the "false balance" issue impossible to deal with.

We don't have "right leaning facts", we either have facts or we don't.

And yes, omitting facts or focusing on others can certainly influence people, but we aren't even at that point any more, we have lies being positioned as equally valid "other side" arguments.

> If I were in charge I'd reorient the leanings so that sources like NPR would not show up as "left-leaning" but as centrist (i.e. a more European alignment which is more historically accurate/real, IMHO

It is not historically accurate. The terms left and right come from the French Revolution.

Those on the right supported a strong monarchy, those in a center supported a weak monarchy with a republic, and those on the left supported a republic and no monarchy.

Pretty much every news media, regardless if they are now considered "right wing", would meet the definition of left wing historically.

Yes, these things mutate over time. Their historical roots are interesting but have no bearing on their common usage today. A similar story for those who claim left-wing politicians in the USA are really "European centrists" -- possibly true, but pedantic and irrelevant in the context of American left-right discussions.

> Yes, these things mutate over time. Their historical roots are interesting but have no bearing on their common usage today.

I agree. I was just commenting on how the historical understanding is not more accurate for today's understanding and how his definition of historical was quite modern still.

> A similar story for those who claim left-wing politicians in the USA are really "European centrists" -- possibly true, but pedantic and irrelevant in the context of American left-right discussions.

I also agree, but I think that it is hard to know what politicians actually believe. I'm sure there are a number of communists in congress, they just aren't open about it and support more moderate legislation to not look radical. For all we know many of the left wing US politicians are further left than European ones.

Just looking at what they say and vote is not true to their beliefs.

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