It's not feasible for every trusted source of knowledge to have their own radio station, so the sources utilize existing stations, and consumers have no choice but to tune into those stations.
It's perfectly feasible for every trusted source of knowledge to run a web server, and they actually do it, so it's sad that consumers don't connect directly to those servers and instead use middlemen.
I know we're not supposed to discuss downvotes, but there's a sibling comment that makes the point I wanted to make, but it's dead. It seems fine, and the user's history is filled with dead comments that mostly also seem fine.
Regardless, if anyone has a response to a bunch of websites being a worse security model than one giant platform, you can reply to me instead.
Also, if you look through their comment history, you can often find the comment(s) that got them shadow-banned. And if their ~recent comment history is good, with many vouched comments, you can ask dang to un-ban them.
> People are not looking for trusted sources of knowledge. They are looking for entertainment.
Which people? Whose people? This is not a statement of psychological truth. It may however describe a societal truth.
But it is not true that people in all countries want above all to be entertained. People struggle in undemocratic countries. Education makes democracy strong. It also breeds rebels.
Public discourse reflects education. A society conditions its citizens to think a certain way. The typical conditioning involves protecting the society. The flag, the anthem, the history, the current power structure and its wars.
It's sad to see journalism collapse in a democracy. It's sad and perhaps fatal for democracy if people have been conditioned to be infantile and their implanted desire for gratification has overwhelmed their thinking and speech.
What people trust is generally what fits their worldview which is increasingly reinforced by the filter bubbles provided by tech companies. The increasing polarisation and tribalism is made worse by the traditional network programming and now algorithms that present what the audience is comfortable to see and hear.
I like using DDG because it doesn't filter, but at the same time I hate wading through utter crap and being the filter.
Twitter for all its flaws is pretty good at giving everyone a voice so you can read something and then the criticisms without having to aggregate that from multiple sites.
How often do you need to be the filter? I’m genuinely curious because your experience is very different from my own, where I’ve been using DDG for years and I only notice poor results roughly 1 in 100 of the times, and then I’m just a quick “g! <search term>” away from slightly higher quality results.
Political news. G! does a better job of pushing smaller regional papers and more left/right leaning outlets and blogs down the rankings so the mainstream media gets more of a look in.
What prevents those trusted sources from being similarly hacked once they're now the main arbiters of important information? I'd even argue this may be more dangerous especially if tech and security are not their core focus.
It's perfectly feasible for every trusted source of knowledge to run a web server, and they actually do it, so it's sad that consumers don't connect directly to those servers and instead use middlemen.