Media Meltdown and also Media Bias 101

[ewsieg]

2 hours ago, gehringer_2 said:

The key for them will be to provide a less cluttered, reliable and more enjoyable environment for non-political information. If they do that, sports and current events will draw the wider audience and they can prevent falling into an echosphere trap. Right now they have a opportunity to do that since Elon is currently so fixed on beating everyone about the head with his personally curated nonsense in the other place.

Hopefully that is the case.  Today I was graced by some blue checked guy saying that the Las Vegas shooting was really an assassination attempts on MBS by people in blacked out helicopters.  He had a video showing 'proof' the gunfire was coming from the helicopters.  If you agreed with him, you were hailed as amazing, but if you questioned any aspect of what he said, you were a nutjob, idiot, loser, or possibly part of the cover up.  One guy responded saying something like "I'm not sure about the helicopters, but there is no way the supposed shooter did this with an AR-15"  I honestly don't know if it was an AR-15, but instead of liking the fact this guy was at least skeptical, he went off on him for being so dumb not to believe the helicopters.   Weird world we live in.

[Tiger337]

I actually found twitter useful from a baseball perspective, but all the right wing political stuff they try to jam down your throat is just too creepy for me.  BlueSky is not any more useful so far, but the environment is more enjoyable.  It should get more useful as more people join.   

[mtutiger]

3 hours ago, gehringer_2 said:

The key for them will be to provide a less cluttered, reliable and more enjoyable environment for non-political information. If they do that, sports and current events will draw the wider audience and they can prevent falling into an echosphere trap. Right now they have a opportunity to do that since Elon is currently so fixed on beating everyone about the head with his personally curated nonsense in the other place.

I've overall been surprised how much of a presence has been established by non-political accounts on the app versus journalism/political accounts. Personally noticed it early on

This thread from Conor Sen was sort of interesting and I think gets at part of it... https://bsky.app/profile/conorsen.bsky.social/post/3lbdmpjo3lk2k; Twitter has in some ways become a place for people who heavy hitters who want to talk *at* people (because of it's reach) while Bsky kinda recaptures the old magic and fosters actual engagement in the comments (without being overwridden by bots). 

Like Ewsieg though, while the app will likely never outrun having a more left political lean, I do hope that it doesn't get too grifter-lefty or echo-chambery. I would like to think the people running it have learned from experience (having been born out of Twitter in the first place), but we shall see.

Edited November 20, 2024 by mtutiger

[chasfh]

19 hours ago, oblong said:

I’m still using it but I find myself unfollowing accounts each time I go on there. Basically anything political except for certain right leaning people whose opinions I still value as a sanity check.  I also still find value in some of the entertainment based people and such. But I’m limiting my engagement.  I think I replied once to a post since the election.  

Why do you hate free speech?

[oblong]

17 minutes ago, chasfh said:

Why do you hate free speech?

that's right.  I forgot.  Freedom of speech means a right to be heard.  

[LaceyLou]

Twitter was-and might still be-the best place for me to get updates on delays/diversions/etc on the MBTA. That's why I originally joined, and that's how I found a lot of the transit and urban life members. 

I'll find another way to get my transit updates, I guess. 

[LaceyLou]

42 minutes ago, oblong said:

that's right.  I forgot.  Freedom of speech means a right to be heard.  

Not only a right to be heard, but also the right to be heard without anything you say being challenged!

[chasfh]

1 hour ago, oblong said:

Freedom of speech means to be heard by the right.  

 

[gehringer_2]

1 hour ago, oblong said:

that's right.  I forgot.  Freedom of speech means a right to be heard.  

but.....I think there have been changes in the information eco-sphere we have been slow to recognize. In the pre-internet age, speech suppression had to be directed at particular person with a particular/specific motivation. So it wasn't that hard to understand what 'suppression of free speech" was. Today, when the algorithm can simply bury various speech contents without any specific action against an individual do we still have an effective understanding of what speech suppression is? For most modern intents and purposes I don't think US law still does.

 

Edited November 20, 2024 by gehringer_2

[Tiger337]

21 hours ago, oblong said:

I’m still using it but I find myself unfollowing accounts each time I go on there. Basically anything political except for certain right leaning people whose opinions I still value as a sanity check.  I also still find value in some of the entertainment based people and such. But I’m limiting my engagement.  I think I replied once to a post since the election.  

I block most of the liberal political accounts too.  Twitter is generally a terrible place to learn anything useful about politics.  

[CMRivdogs]

Twitter used to be the best aggregator for breaking news, depending on who you followed. Then came Trump's fake news followed by bots and Musk. Now it's worse than Nextdoor 

[romad1]

bsky is a good signifier that you reject oligarchy.

[oblong]

Will it get to a point where we look down on a person on twitter but not Bluesky?  Or look up depending on your POV?

[chasfh]

I went to Bluesky because I got sick of blocking political firebreathers showing up on my baseball feed, and that includes people who use their baseball cred to slip in political commentary, and I don’t mean Baseball Crank.

[romad1]

Bsky is still a little disjointed but i like the overall vibe.  

[CMRivdogs]

I for one can't wait for all those stories next summer deploring the high price of tomatoes and guacamole in grocery stores.

Quote

If you voted out the incumbent because you thought grocery prices were too high, I got some bad news from you. 
For example, 90% of our avocados come from Mexico. Guac is REALLY gonna cost extra
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/08/17/why-90percent-of-the-us-avocado-supply-comes-from-mexico-.html

 

 

[CMRivdogs]

1 minute ago, CMRivdogs said:

I for one can't wait for all those stories next summer deploring the high price of tomatoes and guacamole in grocery stores.

 

 

Quote

If you voted out the incumbent because you thought housing prices were too high, got more bad news from you. 
We import $105B in cement/lime/minerals and $28B in lumber/paper from Canada. We also *already* tariff that lumber to death
Expect construction costs to go through the roof (so to speak)

Quote

If you voted out the incumbent because you thought gas prices were too high, I have yet more bad news for you.
The petroleum industry is well-integrated across North America. In the American Midwest, most refined petroleum products come from Canada
https://bsky.app/profile/gasbuddyguy.bsky.social/post/3lbsse7tqcc2e

https://bsky.app/profile/crampell.bsky.social/post/3lbsvsep7es2n

[CMRivdogs]

Finally was able to extract myself from the Musk cesspool. Now if the butterfly app would allow us to embed posts. I don't mind the copy, paste, link mode, but was spoiled by the pre-musk setup over on the old bird

[chasfh]

Dear lord, please let this be true ...

Not because I am a huge MSNBC slappy—I almost never watch it—but I can't stomach the thought of this guy buying every major non-MAGA media vehicle in the country and turning them into Joe Rogan shock jock outlets, or whatever.

I acknowledge that fascism-curious red hats would love for that to happen, but for the rest of us, please be reminded that's how the Nazi Germanies and the Soviet Unions of the world started out: they shut down media dissent first thing. After that, they rounded up the all the political opponents for political reasons and nobody heard a thing about that.

Edited November 27, 2024 by chasfh

[romad1]

Seeing a lot of people on bsky saying it was the only place the South Korean coup was being reported.  I can see why X would block it because Jan 6.  I guess the news moved pretty fast.  If true that the story was moving faster on bsky than elsewhere and being screened as well as could be -- judging by the pre-Elon twitter days standard --that is a very good thing.

[romad1]

Also, had to explain to ladies in my softball league's board that we should have a bluesky account but then had to accept that our Facebook and instagram accounts only have miniscule numbers and people have heard of those.  I will never put up our info on nextdoor. 

[Tigeraholic1]

12 hours ago, romad1 said:

Seeing a lot of people on bsky saying it was the only place the South Korean coup was being reported.  I can see why X would block it because Jan 6.  I guess the news moved pretty fast.  If true that the story was moving faster on bsky than elsewhere and being screened as well as could be -- judging by the pre-Elon twitter days standard --that is a very good thing.

100% not a fact

[pfife]

Well theres confirmation its 100% fact.

Edited December 4, 2024 by pfife

[Tigeraholic1]

On 12/3/2024 at 7:17 PM, romad1 said:

Seeing a lot of people on bsky saying it was the only place the South Korean coup was being reported.  I can see why X would block it because Jan 6.  I guess the news moved pretty fast.  If true that the story was moving faster on bsky than elsewhere and being screened as well as could be -- judging by the pre-Elon twitter days standard --that is a very good thing.

 

[pfife]

State media