Maybe not directly an answer to your question but I donβt believe Reddit was a trustworthy and unbiased news source. Hell it wasnβt even that varied imo with news mainly being about whatβs happening in the US with a focus on politics. Tbh I really donβt know what a good news source would be that thicks all your boxes.
this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2023
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Yeah but the truth of the matter usually came out in the comments
Sure I agree with that. The problem is that the comments also often include statements without sources, plain out wrong information, etc. Much of which can also be highly upvoted. So even with the context of the comments finding unbiased good news requires you to be very sceptic and isnβt always straightforward. Additionally each subreddit has its own target audience which will also inherently result in some bias in both the news that is posted as the comments on said news. But tbh a perfectly unbiased news source probably does not exist as we are all human.
You're right you gotta bring your bucket of salt for all them pinches, but it was often the case that if someone posted a bullshit answer there'd be a repudiation to it; if that one was bollocks? Someone else chimed in. Eventually you have enough to aggregate some semblance of the truth.
The pitfall is relying on votes to do the vetting for you, and reluctance to research under your own power in lieu of citations. Cumbersome work, but if you really want the real picture it's never 100% painless.
I agree that there was generally a consensus in the comments, but that doesn't mean the consensus was correct. Often, different subreddits would come to different conclusions. I think there is a big risk of falling in to the "conformation bias" trap when relying on community consensus.
In not sure if there's a better way to determine the truth, though.
I found it difficult to describe how exactly the comments were informing, sometimes even moreso than the article itself, but this is exactly it.
Just subscribe to RSS feeds from your new sites.
I use InnoReader, which I prefer to Feedly. Syncs Free plan allows you up to 150 feeds and shows ads (which you can easily get around).
I'm currently using Feedly. I subscribe to news outlets that I trust, and just read what I'm interested in there
Thanks for suggestion Inoreader! I've just had a look and it looks great, in particular with their pre-made collections.
I use Flym News Reader (Android app). It's open source and you can find it on F-Droid and GitHub. It's not updated anymore but it has the best combination of features (and I've tried a lot of RSS readers). You can easily add news sources because it has a built-in feed search (when you hit the "add feed" button). It can also import OPML feed collections.
I use an app called Artifact that aggregates news from many sources into a FYP and categories. Thereβs even comments for each article.
@Radicalized I saw some articles on artifact bearing the sign 'rewritten using an AI' and backed out of using the app to avoid that
I'm going to try it
That looks pretty cool, thanks!
Very interested in others folks answers. Honestly, I follow a lot of people on Mastodon who share news. I also follow hashtags for my local area (and here on threadiverse, subscribed to communities focused on my local area). This seems to work okay but isn't quite the firehouse I'm used to.
I've started using newsminimalist.com It's one of the most useful LLM based services I've seen. It's an aggregator that uses ChatGPT to identify the significance of stories and group the articles on different sites about that story together and then summarise them.
I don't want to spend hours every day reading news, but I do want to keep up to date with major events and it's been good for that.
Wow this is pretty neat, have you encountered often that it hallucinates news and such?
No, because the primary purpose of the LLM is to choose among news stories on existing news sites and just group them together put them in order - not so much opportunity to make stuff up.
It's also doing summarisation, but that is something LLMs do pretty well and in that constrained way also don't hallucinate (in my experience).
I think it's best to never read the news, you'll find about stuff that actually affects you naturally anyway.
Focus on communities for your hobbies and career instead.
Iβd argue that one should not stop reading the news forever because youβll just become increasingly disconnected from what happens around you. As with all things, reading news in moderation and not doomscrolling is the way I think.
But you naturally will hear about important stuff anyway or see it on headlines in the supermarket, etc.
Like when the Ukraine war started, the Ukrainians and Russians had a flame-war on the company slack.
And if we really were going to die by climate disaster, nuclear war, pandemics, etc. isn't it better not to know until it happens anyway?
You can't spend your life worrying about things that will materialise decades from now, or are going on thousands of miles away. Focus on your own life and your own family and community.
I very actively followed news and politics a couple of years ago, and had been doing that for a long time. One day I just got completely fed up, and stopped. And holy shit, I've been so much happier and harmonious since then. Strongly recommend, 5/7
I like to keep up to date enough on the things my government chooses to do so that I can make an informed choice the next time I vote.
go to ground.news, they have news from both sides of the spectrum and label them as such and it's kind of like a reddit for news?? world news specifically tho
While i like the idea on principle, I think they have a lot of bothsideism on their site. Dividing everything into "left" or "right" is not a really valid approach.
For tech news, you can try techmeme.com, Hacker News and ycombinator. For general world news, I'm subscribed to TLDR News on Nebula and also check some local outlets websites directly. A few offer RSS which can be useful though that will vary by location.
Hacker News has long been one of my main news sources. The majority of postings are tech-related but there's a lot of more general content and the moderation is very good. https://news.ycombinator.com/ . I generally use Feedly to browse it.
For excellent, in-depth analysis of world events/politics/economics there's the UK-based publication The Economist - https://www.economist.com/ - which is a paid service (expensive!) but has a lot of free content on the site, esp. if you're signed-up, even as a free user. It's not an aggregator though - more like a better NY Times without all the stupid fluff.
Harmonic is a nice HackerNews app for those who'd like one.
I like brutalist.report.
It shows the headlines of many news sites in a clean way: just text links. It also has filters for tech, science, politics, etc.
Edit:typo
The context I got from reddit comment threads was invaluable. I hope to find something similar in the federated wilderness.
no source is truly unbiased, but I am also curious about where to find news/worldnews - there's a few non-beehaw options but they're not updated that often.
for tech stuff I always default to arstech, cnet, and slashdot, but I honestly dont feel like navigating between all of the various disparate news websites on a daily basis - or even a weekly basis to be honest.
I honestly dont feel like navigating between all of the various disparate news websites on a daily basis - or even a weekly basis to be honest.
This is a perfect use case for a feed reader.
any suggestions on a good feed reader?
I like FeedMe (Android). Syncs to my Feedly account so I can also look at the web on my desktop
For years I've heard feed readers were better than reddit, I suppose now is the time to test!
To be honest, I've tried a couple of times, but I miss reading comments. Some sites of course have comments but it's not the same.
Honestly they are quite different, there are pros and cons. A feed reader shows purely what you are subscribed to, and there is no algorithm that rates which links you should see first. You have to curate your own feeds.
Check out ground news. It is a news aggregator, but with a twist: it aggregates all articles on the same event from various sites so you can see how the event is portrayed by different sites.
ground.news is great.
There's also allsides.com, which has a similar idea.
I was just going to link that! Two articles on the topic:
https://www.thefactual.com/blog/what-are-the-best-nonpartisan-news-sources/
https://www.makeuseof.com/top-unbiased-news-sources/
I tried my hand at creating a magazine https://kbin.social/m/neutralnews
Haven't done a lot with it, though. But it was in response to the same dilemma as OP
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