
How Fear and Outrage Are Sold for Profit - tontonius
https://medium.com/the-mission/the-enemy-in-our-feeds-e86511488de
======
karllager
As a kid, I grew up in a country with almost no advertising. Repeat after me:
No ads in the streets, in the TV, in the radio, nowhere.

One day we found a magazine (from another country), which contained ads. Two
people smoking cigarettes in a strangely alien world, some kind of jungle - or
a safari, maybe.

This image was so strange in many ways: Why is it there in a magazine, that
was about something completely different? Who does it speak to? What is this
strange world depicted there? Why does it feel a so - unreal? And why do the
people smile in the picture, even though it is unreal?

Image a day in your life without coming across an ad. Or a week. Or a year.

Take a breath and imagine what the world would feel like.

The need for advertising is deeply rooted in a society, that overproduces
things and where a large part of your survival depends on your skill to sell.
My deepest hope is that this world will be regarded just as strange as my kids
eyes stopped before the strange picture of the two smokers.

~~~
moduspol
Advertising is a fact of life, though. Without it, there's no way to inform
potential customers of a new brand or product.

I mean, imagine if it all disappeared tomorrow. Wouldn't people just stick to
the megacorps and established brands they already know? Wouldn't this make it
even that much tougher for a Netflix to compete with a Comcast, or an
Uber/Lyft to compete with an entrenched taxi industry? How would Dollar Shave
Club possibly compete with Gillette?

I don't like ads, either, but the alternative is worse. It just seems
unrealistic. I know it could be done--I just don't think it'd bring about some
post-materialist society. It'd just allow us to pat ourselves on the back
while making it that much tougher to start a business and compete against
existing businesses.

~~~
theseatoms
It's a matter of push versus pull though. If I know I want a product, I can
search for reviews and recommendations, (half of which I assume are
astroturfed, but I'm counting those as "ads" which would disappear in this
hypothetical.)

~~~
moduspol
How will I promote my new movie? Or book? How would I know to search for a
Netflix or Uber or Dollar Shave Club or Game of Thrones?

I wouldn't, until someone else told me about it. And they wouldn't tell me
about it unless they found out somehow. And how could you possibly
differentiate between grassroots interest and astroturfing, particularly
online?

Besides, how many months go by with you happily using your razor before you
sit down to research whether there are better options? The vast majority of
people choose to spend their time on more important things, thus further
entrenching the status quo.

It'd only make all the things people hate about megacorps worse. We've already
got this dearth of creativity and risk-taking in Hollywood. Imagine how much
worse it'd be if they couldn't advertise something new!

~~~
datagram
It seems to me like reviews and word-of-mouth can and already do a good job of
all this. When I find out about new things, it's generally through social
networks. And when I'm looking to buy something new I usually look for
reviews.

> How will I promote my new movie? Or book?

The same way that people do today. Talk shows, trailers (which you let people
organically share, rather than paying to put it in front of people),
movie/book reviewers.

> Besides, how many months go by with you happily using your razor before you
> sit down to research whether there are better options?

I feel like you're countering your own point here. Buying a new razor when
you're already happy with the one you're using is exactly the kind of
consumerism that advertising encourages.

> We've already got this dearth of creativity and risk-taking in Hollywood.
> Imagine how much worse it'd be if they couldn't advertise something new!

I disagree. Imagine if advertising didn't exist, and the only way to get the
word out about new movies was through movie reviews, and so studios were
actually encouraged to make good movies. I think we would have a lot less
riding on established IP.

~~~
moduspol
> It seems to me like reviews and word-of-mouth can and already do a good job
> of all this.

They do now, as part of a society that includes advertising. That word of
mouth comes as a result of people being aware of things. Reviewers focus on
reviewing things people are interested in reading about. All of these benefit
from advertising.

> Talk shows, trailers (which you let people organically share, rather than
> paying to put it in front of people), movie/book reviewers.

We're going to get in pretty deep if people appearing on talk shows to promote
something doesn't count as an advertisement.

Even trailers have to be promoted somehow. They run the trailers in ads
because they're effective! They're effective because a significant chunk of
people wouldn't have seen the movie, who otherwise would have if they had
known about it. They would have known about it if the general word of mouth
and close friends on social networks were enough. But it isn't. Clearly
reviews and word of mouth are not sufficient.

> I feel like you're countering your own point here. Buying a new razor when
> you're already happy with the one you're using is exactly the kind of
> consumerism that advertising encourages.

Me continuing to drive to a Target to pay $7 for a four-blade razor with
special proprietary blade cartridges because I assume better options don't
exist due to not spending time researching the purchase is not reduced
materialism or consumerism. It's just protecting the status quo.

> I disagree. Imagine if advertising didn't exist, and the only way to get the
> word out about new movies was through movie reviews, and so studios were
> actually encouraged to make good movies. I think we would have a lot less
> riding on established IP.

Putting aside that movie reviews are not as inherently separate from
advertising as you're suggesting, I totally disagree. Only a small subset of
moviegoers actually read reviews ahead of time and use that to influence a
decision. We'd only see more people showing up to see brands they already know
well (e.g. Star Wars, Transformers) and less likely to attend movies they've
heard / seen nothing about. The people who don't value reviews won't suddenly
start valuing them, and the gap between "things movie critics like" and "thing
general moviegoers like" won't close.

Same with buying a soda from a company other than Coke/Pepsi. Same with buying
an unknown shampoo brand, or an unknown car brand, etc. Except it's really
even worse in other industries because people aren't looking for or expecting
a new shampoo. And so we just stick to whatever we've been buying, even if
it's some huge megacorp milking their brand because competitors have no
platform to make the case that they're better.

~~~
acoard
>They do now, as part of a society that includes advertising. That word of
mouth comes as a result of people being aware of things.

Word of mouth has worked fine long before mass media advertising became a
thing.

Is our society and economy dependant on advertising? Absolutely. Has it always
been this way, and must it always be this way? Not so much.

------
maxxxxx
I don't understand why so many people are addicted to outrage, anger and fear.
For a while I played along but then I quickly realized that all this stuff is
manufactured to manipulate people. Now I can't even stand watching CNN or
watching a campaign ad.

~~~
sqeaky
How long until a critical mass of people forms to allow some more useful form
of news to gain economic momentum?

Will it ever happen? If not will the economic repercussions leave us with a
decent world or some kind of dystopia?

~~~
dageshi
I don't think they will, they'll turn off the news completely and follow
"news" about other stuff instead. Sports, video games, hobbies, they'll ignore
current events and politics or anything else they might find anxiety inducing.

That's what I do anyway, I'm much happier for it.

~~~
SimbaOnSteroids
Could we build a plugin that alters headlines to reflect reality?

~~~
breakingcups
That would be fantastic. I'd love a plugin like that.

There is a problem in curation / moderation though. Who do you trust with
correcting headlines? The public, with voting? Easily manipulated still.

Another problem this doesn't correct is the selection of what events to report
on. To use an example from the article, terrorism would still dominate your
news feed.

~~~
SimbaOnSteroids
For the terrorism example you could have a nifty bot that keeps track of
worldwide terror stats and local terror stats and report something like: odds
of dying in terror attack rise from .00005% to .00006% (obv made up number)
after {city} attacks. Would have to figure out how to do this while still
respecting those who were affected though.

Or for clickbait science headlines immediately report the statistical
significance of the cited paper/credibility of journal based on the number of
citations that journal recieves from other scientists.

Some types of articles would be tougher than others for sure but that doesn't
mean we couldn't grab at the low hanging fruit.

------
eludwig
A nicely laid out and illustrated article that's well written.

That's about the best I can say. The worst is why? Who is the audience for
this? I firmly believe that if you found this article by clicking on a link on
the HN homepage, then you already know all this. It's exactly the kind of
article we've been reading about in one form or another for 20 years.

If you didn't find this article on the homepage of HN, then the odds are that
you will never read it. Why? Because of all of the noise that the very article
itself points out!

This is a type of preaching to the choir, imo. Reinforcing to the wrong
audience. The points made are fair, but obvious.

But it is pretty! :)

~~~
ereyes01
I shared the article in my Facebook feed. It will reach at least a couple of
friends that are habitual troll victims. I guess to your point, that probably
won't stop them from being victims/easy bait. At least they'll read it,
hopefully.

~~~
bmelton
I highly doubt it will matter. I was at the dentist's office about 6 months
ago, and as I'd had a few dental procedures done over a spread-out timeline,
I'd made friends with the dental assistants.

We were talking about the news (which was on in the background) and I
cautioned the lady at the desk to not put too much stock in it, and to wait
around for updates before drawing any conclusions. She asked why, and I
explained that the 24 hour news cycle often drops facts -- a couple of segues
later, and I made the point that everybody thinks America is more dangerous
than ever, largely because of the constant fear-mongering in the news, but
crime statistics actually show falling crime rates over the past few decades.

She didn't believe me, so I asked her to Google it on the computer in front of
her, which resulted in a search result something like this[1], but before she
started giving too much credence to it, she Googled a few more times until she
found an article about Baltimore crime rates going up, even though we weren't
in Baltimore, and neither of us lived in Baltimore, and she'd previously
admitted to not having been _in_ Baltimore in more than a decade -- none of
that mattered, because her confirmation bias was slaked.

[1] -
[http://www.slate.com/content/dam/slate/articles/news_and_pol...](http://www.slate.com/content/dam/slate/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2014/12/141209_Charts-
Homicide-Rates-US-England.jpg.CROP.promovar-mediumlarge.jpg)

~~~
seanwilson
We need to promote critical thinking skills somehow (obviously a difficult
task though). I don't see how it's a good strategy to simply accept a
population lacks critical thinking skills and the only way forward is the
impossible goal of stopping all misleading news from reaching people.

The people that believe obviously misleading news are just as much at fault as
the ones producing the news.

------
erikb
Is it a coincidence that just yesterday we discussed a similar topic with fear
being a product sold to us?
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14843080](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14843080)

(This is to increase the discussion spectrum, not to shut down the one started
here)

~~~
sevensor
I encourage everyone to read the Lapham essay. The medium article under
discussion here presents details, Lapham's essay talks about the historical
forces driving the culture of fear. The problem I have with this meta
discussion is that it _also_ inclines to make one fearful. At least in this
instance we're talking fearfully about fear itself.

For my part, I've begun to recognize that any news that provokes me to outrage
was designed specifically for that end. This at least converts anger and
despair at the state of the world to annoyance at the media outlet that would
stoop to courting outrage. It leaves me with precious little news to read.

~~~
kurthr
Exactly, I can't believe how meta the whole "This Is How Your Fear and Outrage
Are Being Sold..." tile is. They are using your fear and outrage at other
peoples fear and outrage to sell your clicks or attention to someone else.
It's about like the, "my narrow media sources tell me that you live in a media
bubble that isn't like my own!" argument de absurdum.

[https://itscoffeeti.me/secrets-of-monetizing-a-medium-
blog-d...](https://itscoffeeti.me/secrets-of-monetizing-a-medium-
blog-d9b9acc85be2)

------
eapotapov
I think the biggest problem is that the media got dissolved within social
networks clickbait titles were existing before - just remember tabloids.

the thing is that when you see offline media you see: 1\. the brand 2\. you
know how reliable is this media 3\. you usually know the audience and think if
you're part of it and trust the media

so in offline, they don't afraid that their reader will buy something else
(well they afraid, but it's not a matter of click)

in facebook it's all just titles when reposted and people don't check where
exactly it was published before clicking

so it's just like "national examiner" will have a version published in the
design of nytimes or anything else - so they will not only have their audience
but will try to get a slice of other media's audience

it could have been a quite complex thing to do for offline media as you need
to actually print the edition, and pay money for it, but it's free for online,
and you get money per view/per click

so i think it's definitely a war between media for this new spread audience on
social, there should be a new way to re-establish reliability

------
frankydp
I would be happy with just opinion free and divisive speech free headlines. If
the big outlets could simply start with that, it might be attainable. Words
matter.

In the meantime. [https://legiblenews.com/](https://legiblenews.com/)

~~~
hkmurakami
The Economist, while not devoid of biases, is as close as we have to this.

~~~
frankydp
I would also suggest that the LA Times does seem to apply a lot of effort into
separating OP/ED and news. They do publish a lot of op/ed, but it is decently
separated.

------
blizkreeg
This is what we've sold for millennia. Right from Roman-era gladiatorial
fights (for pure entertainment) to CNN, Fox, or Breitbart disguising
entertainment as news, telling you the world is coming to an end.

While we can and should certainly aspire to a different way, plainly presented
news and information has few(er) takers in comparison to shock and awe. Humans
love drama.

------
kawera
An interesting book on the subject is "The Science of Fear" by Daniel Gardner:
[https://www.amazon.com/Science-Fear-Culture-Manipulates-
Brai...](https://www.amazon.com/Science-Fear-Culture-Manipulates-
Brain/dp/0452295467)

------
laretluval
The narrative that information distribution was more accurate in the past
because of "traditional journalism" has always struck me as self-serving.

> Journalism — the historical counter to propaganda — has become the biggest
> casualty in this algorithmic war for our attention.

Is the best solution really to fight propaganda by leaving our information
distribution to a selected elite that we have to trust to follow some
standards? Journalists are humans just like everyone else, although we've been
taught to think of them as super-moral heroes.

Is there a trustless way to implement journalistic standards such as sourcing?

~~~
matt4077
> Is there a trustless way to implement journalistic standards such as
> sourcing?

No, there isn't. But people really misunderstand how journalists deal with
sources. Here's a recent compilation of behind-the-scenes stories from
journalists, that also happens to better communicate the actual work they do
than I've seen before: [https://www.cjr.org/business_of_news/scoops-
fahrenthold-greg...](https://www.cjr.org/business_of_news/scoops-fahrenthold-
greg-howard.php)

In short, an "anonymous source" isn't just a reporter making something up. On
the rare occasion that something like that happened, it became a major story
in itself.

It's also rare for these sources to lie. These sources are real people, after
all. And a lie would burn their relationship with the journalist and medium,
and possibly beyond. For a politician, that could be a career-ending move.

Just to illustrate: we're reading new insider stories from the white house
almost every day now. I can point to any number of anonymously-sourced stories
that were later proven right by official announcements. There may be some that
can't (yet) be judged, such as the persistence rumours that X or Y may resign.
But the only story that was provably wrong was the Scaramucci-Malta story by
CNN.

~~~
smsm42
> In short, an "anonymous source" isn't just a reporter making something up.

Is there really any difference who made it up if at the end the story came out
false? If you look well enough, it's not hard to find people willing to say
what you want to hear, and lying by proxy is not much better than lying
outright.

> It's also rare for these sources to lie. These sources are real people,
> after all.

Implying real people do not lie? They do, all the time. Even more often, they
are misinformed, mistaken, confuse their wishes for real fact, exaggerate
their knowledge, etc.

> I can point to any number of anonymously-sourced stories that were later
> proven right by official announcements.

I can also point to any number that were proven false. E.g. CNN reporting
Comey expected to refute Trumps words about not investigating him, and Comey
confirming Trumps words. Or the same Comey calling NYT reporting "almost
completely wrong" (I guess they got Trump's name correctly?) Not to mention
that hilarious Fusion GPS "dossier". There's a ton of this stuff around, all
the time. It's a free market - if there's demand, there's supply, and man, is
there the demand.

> There may be some that can't (yet) be judged, such as the persistence
> rumours that X or Y may resign

That's a nice one because eventually everybody resigns (or gets fired, but
that is usually also framed as "resigned", see Spicer), or dies. Since the
former case is much more frequent, one can always bet on the rumor that X or Y
may resign - eventually it will become true. It's just not true _yet_...

------
Mefis
"Regardless of the dramatic drop in crime over the last 30 years, more than
half the population believes crime is worse than it was in years past."

"The children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority;
they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise." \-
Socrates

This argument keeps popping up. To confirm it we would need a control group.
It is likely that even before social media people believed the state of
affairs worse than it actually was. Maybe people are more prone to believe
that our condition is deteriorating rather than improving.

~~~
caseydurfee
Isn't the control group the part of the graph from 1993-2000ish, where
perception and reality are fairly closely correlated?

I guess that raises more questions than it answers. What about the rise of
cable news? That tracks the change in the graph more closely than the rise of
social networks. What about 9/11 and the war on terrorism? A significant
portion of the US population lost their shit and never got it back. I'm not
sure we should pin all or even most of the change on social media.

I think you have a point that the "good old days fallacy" has been around
since forever. But it also seems like something dramatically changed 15 years
ago or so.

------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
As the article mentions, this sensationalism was also a problem in the past. I
think the big change is the subscription model vs the one-off model. A one-off
model whether sold on the street or on the Internet favors a sensational
attention grabbing. A subscription model favors long term value which is
insight and honesty.

I am happy that some of these traditional newspapers are going back to a
traditional model. I would guess that if you compared headlines from
newspapers that are subscription vs ad based, the ad based ones have
significantly more sensational headlines.

------
hprotagonist
_Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need
ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your
intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud,
always on the verge of being found out.

But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil
or sinful, it's that they're unconscious. They are default settings. They're
the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more
and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever
being fully aware that that's what you're doing.

And the so-called real world will not discourage you from operating on your
default settings, because the so-called real world of men and money and power
hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving and
worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways
that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom.

The freedom all to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the
center of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of
course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most
precious you will not hear much talk about much in the great outside world of
wanting and achieving and [unintelligible-- sounds like "displayal"]. The
really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and
discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice
for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.

That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think.
The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the
constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing._

DFW, 2005.

~~~
SCHiM
It's strange how many people in this thread are discussing concepts such as
'choice', 'do', 'freedom'.

Perhaps I've been too deep down the philosophical/metaphysical rabbit hole,
but AFAIK there's only three options:

    
    
        1) Deep down (past the turtles-all-the-way-deep) there's only chaos
        2) <strike> Free will and alternative options exist</strike>
        3) It's only predetermined order past the turtles.
    

And 2 is somehow impossibly situated on the razors' edge where 1 and 3
intersect, science is as yet undecided if 1 or 3, but our macro scale world
appears to be 3.

'I' really ' _want_ ' to be convinced of 2, but it's something 'I' lost a long
time ago, anyone care to convince me? These days 'I' find some comfort in 1.
If it 'turns' out to be 3 'I'll' 'be' very sad indeed :(

Long story short: There's nothing to chose, either it's all been decided
already, and your 'thoughts' are nothing but atoms and other things rattling
around, generating the illusion of your conciousness, or there's only chaos
and we're (also) never 'making' any choices, they are all just rolls of the
dice.

~~~
nostrademons
I recall studying free will in Intro Philosophy class, and Hobart [1] had a
good argument that free will vs. determinism was a false dichotomy stemming
from a misunderstanding of what it means to "choose" something.

His argument, paraphrased for the layman (he wrote in fairly impenetrable
terms) was basically:

Say that we do have a deterministic world, where human action is the result of
each human being continually processing stimuli, rationally (or emotionally)
evaluating it, and then deciding on a course of action. _The meaning of
"choice"_ is this process, and _the meaning of "self"_ is all the hidden
machinery that lets us go from a stimulus to a course of action. People who
believe free will and determinism are incompatible are implicitly positing
that there's some entity _outside_ of this process of weighing alternatives
and choosing one, but there is no evidence for such an entity and no need to
invent one. Rather, our common-sense notions of choice are completely
compatible with someone having received a bunch of sensory inputs and then
used the internal circuitry of their brain to decide on a course of action,
and our common-sense notions of self are compatible with different people
having different dispensations to make certain choices under various
circumstances. And we can make moral judgments based on our evaluation of
whether the choices another makes will be helpful or harmful to our interests.

Interestingly (and this is me adding to the theory after 15 years of life
experience), this perspective seems to mirror psychological development. I've
found that as I've gotten older, I tend to settle into my own skin. When I was
young, it was like I'd frequently "pop out" of my self and my actions and be
like "who _is_ this person?" As I've gotten older, it's more like "Yeah, I'm
me, and I make the best choices I can with the information available to me,
and ultimately I'm responsible for the consequences even if they don't work
out." It's like there's less of a divide between that automatic stimulus ->
processing -> response cycle and my objective perception of my life.

[1] [https://www.st-
andrews.ac.uk/~mnat/~ball0888/oxfordopen/hoba...](https://www.st-
andrews.ac.uk/~mnat/~ball0888/oxfordopen/hobart.pdf)

~~~
SCHiM
I've always found the notion of compatibilism untenable as the problem is
deeper than 'the hidden machinery that is in the process of weighing
alternatives'.

The problem to me is that that machinery does not exist. It's not there, how
can something (anything at all in them most extreme sense, a human, a
'system', an AI an animal the hidden machinery in the human brain, a bunch of
particles or whatever) 'choose' when there's no alternatives? Real hard
predeterminism implies that there's nothing to chose at all. Doesn't the
theory of conservation of information tell us that information is never
created or lost, so that on a grand scale, basically nothing is happening at
all? All information that existed at the big bang is still there, and always
will be. There's no place for hidden machinery to make more, or make choices.
The 'result' of that choice must have existed/been known before, because
otherwise information would have been created at that magical 'choosing'
moment.

------
dkhenry
CCP Grey video on this topic, but from a slightly different perspective

[https://youtu.be/rE3j_RHkqJc](https://youtu.be/rE3j_RHkqJc)

------
felipeccastro
Great article! And oh, the irony of having a very engaging title... It seems
it all boils down to incentives: if the only available way of making money is
ads, news agencies will optimize for that. I wonder if new techs like
blockchain/ethereum may provide alternative ways of making money with
different kinds of incentives (i.e. not optimized for more clicks, but for
something else).

------
partycoder
In the US, people from places that not even a scholar with a geography major
can find on a map are afraid of being attacked by people that don't even know
their town exists, and even if they did, I highly doubt they even bothered to
go all the way there to just to harm an average rural guy that nobody knows.
It's nonsense.

------
AdeptusAquinas
I and I am sure a good percentage of the internet population always struggle
with articles like this. I don't have an ad blocker, don't have any 'ad-free'
subscriptions to anything, yet I never click an ad while at the same time am
not particularly bothered by them. They're just noise, and since they register
as basically whitespace in my head, noise easily ignored.

I don't feel 'at war' when I go online, and even if my attention is
'captured', it certainly doesn't translate to any purchased products or
revenue for the 'aggressors'.

That being said, I don't dismiss that it does occur: as Max Barry the author
said, 'the industry is making multiple billions a year - that money comes from
someone' (paraphrased). Just not from me.

~~~
wu-ikkyu
Just because you don't click on an ad or think you ignore them doesn't mean
you're not being manipulated by them.

Subconscious influence/manipulation is more powerful and prevalent than most
people realize.

The most skillful forms of influence are invisible to the target.

~~~
shostack
Nor does it mean advertisers can't track your behavior after the fact.

A conversion event post ad impression without a click is called a "view-
through conversion" and is a cornerstone metric of most display advertising
because the bulk of performance from display is likely to be view-through vs.
click-based.

Advertisers without "hard" conversion metrics can still measure uplift just as
easily.

~~~
AdeptusAquinas
I would like to think that no, my spending tends to be largely on things that
do not tend to be advertised (craft beer and bills, mainly). But no doubt you
are right. Still, if its so passive that I can barely detect it happening, all
power to them.

~~~
freshhawk
Which craft beers? Most of them are manufactured by huge corporate breweries.

Do you own a car? What kind? Is it an older honda civic or something similar?
In North America your choice of cars is almost certainly the result of
advertising, both on you and on the people who's opinion about you you care
about.

~~~
AdeptusAquinas
NZer here. Our craft beer is still mostly owned by small companies, with some
notable recent exceptions. But for whatever reason I don't see ads for beer,
either NZ or otherwise, online.

I own a BMW, but have no interest in cars and so don't see car ads online (nor
would they be effective - the BMW was chosen by my wife).

I take your point, and I am not arguing I am the exception, however your
specific examples probably don't apply.

Maybe the choice of utility companies? Internet, power etc. We have more
choices here than the US tends to have, due to the smaller market and more
government regulated competition. It's hardly a dire violation of my personal
liberty if I am manipulated into picking one or another provider of fibre
though.

~~~
freshhawk
I have a weakness for BMW myself. But when you look at what you get for what
it costs it is the very definition of a status purchase, which is an
advertising based choice by definition.

I think that makes my point well actually, you may actually be an exception
but because of your social/personal circle you were effected.

Now that you mention it, a big part of it for me is the issue of liberty. I
would massively prefer to make a choice based on having a gun to my head
rather than being manipulated into it without my knowledge. In one case I'm
aware of the manipulation and have a chance to do _something_ to fix the
situation, in the other I simply lose some liberty without noticing a little
at a time.

------
transposed
I'm pretty good at not falling victim to this. I don't check facebook. I don't
watch TV or the news. I don't listen to the radio. I have a suite of ad-
blocking technology. My attention is entirely mine to direct.

Instead I read, listen to podcasts (which are sponsored oftentimes, but it's
more relevant and less intrusive), watch recordings of episodes/streams
without commercials.

I believe I feel better because of this, and have more knowledge and skills.
But I also sometimes feel like I live under a rock when I miss facebook
reminders of birthdays, and "haven't heard" about current events that are
blaring across all channels.

------
travisl12
I've been feeling that most "news" outlets these days (for a while?) seem like
propaganda. But I think I realize now that this propaganda feeling is just a
side-effect from trying to sell shit.

~~~
ErikVandeWater
I think it's both. If you're interested, I suggest starting by watching the
documentary Spin:
[http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/spin/](http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/spin/)

------
icanhackit
This was touched on by the study mentioned in the article which researched
millions of headlines -- there was a interesting study from Wharton School of
Marketing titled What Makes Online Content Viral [1] that demonstrated which
emotional valences led to readers sharing content, and the biggest predictor
was anger. Interestingly the valence that led to the least amount of sharing
was sadness.

[1]
[http://opim.wharton.upenn.edu/~kmilkman/2012_JMR.pdf](http://opim.wharton.upenn.edu/~kmilkman/2012_JMR.pdf)

------
stcredzero
I'm going to spread this link as far and wide as I can!

Also:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc)

------
equivocates
Is this article not an example of the very thing it complains of?

------
raverbashing
And articles like that miss (or just ignore) that there are reasons to be
worried, as small as they might be

A person having Ebola seems to me like a significant fact even though it
doesn't represent any danger

These articles want to play a holier-than-though nihilist/"we know better"
image but just come across as idiotic.

Overreacting is stupid, but underreacting is naive.

~~~
egwynn
The article isn't arguing for underreaction. It argues that overreaction is
worse now than it was before because the new platforms for publishing have
dispensed with a number of editorial checks that would have tempered the
sensationalism. Its main aim is that overreaction is more expensive than many
realize.

------
artur_makly
coincidentally i just discovered NYTimes's survey of a multimedia article
about the jordanian debacle. they sre asking some deep questions of me:

screenshot : [http://imgur.com/a/uzqXR](http://imgur.com/a/uzqXR) survey :
[https://nyt.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_4INloKlK2qDNyfz?source...](https://nyt.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_4INloKlK2qDNyfz?source=https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/07/25/world/middleeast/special-
forces-jordan-shootout-survivor.html)

------
abhishek0318
This article's headline is ironic.

------
defined
Obligatory xkcd webcomic:

[https://xkcd.com/1283/](https://xkcd.com/1283/)

------
anotherbrownguy
>Journalism — the historical counter to propaganda

"The good old days", except that never existed. Journalism has always been the
tool for the powerful to paint a positive picture of themselves to the general
public via "unbiased agents" called journalists who are "free to write
anything" as long as it serves their masters.

Now that almost anyone can publish their opinion and share it with everyone,
the ones who have been doing their thing for hundreds of years are being
exposed.

~~~
anigbrowl
This ignores the fact that many journalistic endeavors have been borne out by
historical factors, although perhaps in your model of the world all
journalists and social change occur only at the will of powerful forces which
manipulate things from behind the scene. But not you, of course.

~~~
ameister14
If you're trying to say that journalistic endeavors occurred because of
multiple historical factors and not just a shadowy cabal, which is what I
think you were trying to say, you may mean borne out of, not borne out by.
'Borne out by' essentially means 'proven by,' whereas 'borne out of' means
'came about because of.'

~~~
anigbrowl
I mean by. I typed factors when I meant events because I was half-listening to
someone talking at the time :-/

To be clear, my point is that journalism can be evaluated by how well it
predicts outcomes, or how reliably it documents things that are subsequently
judged to matter.

------
mcappleton
I'm very glad I found Hacker news. Sometimes I read the news just cause I'm
bored. Now I can just read hacker news which helps me be a better coder
instead of draining me of emotional energy

~~~
hkmurakami
HN is hardly devoid of fear and anger and biases and prejudice and self
interest. In fact it's pretty much filled with it -- but not quite overflowing
with it like many other popular textual outlets.

And with all due respect, this thread isn't helping you become a better coder.
If anything it's stoking our emotional needs, just in a different manner than
say CNN.

~~~
mcappleton
Lol, what you are saying is true, but I actually do find some content about
coding here!

Also I appreciate the discussions. Instead of one agenda rammed down mu
throats, I get to see the honest opinions of a lot of people.

------
iratewizard
Just an FYI - you will probably cringe when you look back at how you used to
type and form sentences.

~~~
rosser
Can you please clarify the point you're making here?

Because this is a complete _non sequitur_ to me.

~~~
devilsavocado
I have no idea why you are italicizing types of logical fallacies. I can't
think of a good reason to do that.

And just pointing out that you believe they are committing a logical fallacy
without any explanation is a very lazy discussion technique.

~~~
rosser
It's customary in some contexts to italicize "loan words". The terms for the
fallacies come from the Latin. _Ergo_...

As for your second point, I think it's pretty clear from both my comments and
their context why I'm pointing out those fallacies. That said, in the case of
" _non sequitur_ ", I was actually referring more to the literary sense of the
term — "Where the hell did _that_ come from?" — than the fallacious "does not
follow" sense.

~~~
devilsavocado
Those terms are used all the time on hn but not usually italicized, but that's
fair, I get your point.

When you respond twice in a row in a comment chain saying that they are using
a logical fallacy, and nothing else, you've done nothing to add to the
conversation, but are playing the role of Logic Studies 101 Professor. That's
probably what they meant by the looking back on on your writing comment.

------
WalterBright
That article makes me outraged!

------
smsm42
> This is not your fault — it is by design.

Here's where I disagree. It is your fault. You don't have to watch youtube
videos. If you do and the result is not to your liking - it's your fault.
Nobody stood with a gun to your temple, nobody injected you with mind-
suppressing drugs. You just like silly Youtube videos. Own it and stop blaming
somebody else, or install site-blocking extension into your browser. Your life
is your responsibility, and so is your time, whatever you do with it,
including wasting it on silly youtube videos.

------
gmarx
I noticed his violent crime graph stopped around 2013. Convenient. Yes violent
crime is down by the standards of the previous 50 years but I'm pretty sure it
has been inching back up over the previous two, at least in cities. Nothing to
panic about yet but also nothing to be dismissive about.

Also, though I too long for the old days of journalistic standards, let us a
remember one of the side effects what creating the assumption that there is
one correct mainstream view of reality and that anything that deviates too
much from it is extremism (or today "fake news").

There is almost no such thing as a bias free reporting of facts and events in
the news. Many of the things which were in the past dismissed as the views of
cranks are now accepted as normal. Surely some of the views expressed in the
darker corners of the internet today will someday be considered mainstream and
many of the views expressed by the mainstream real news will some day be
considered nuts.

~~~
eridius
The source for that graph is Pew, and if you look at the linked source, it
looks like violent crime did in fact keep going down (at least until 2015,
Pew's graph doesn't go past that) - [http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-
tank/2016/11/16/voters-perce...](http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-
tank/2016/11/16/voters-perceptions-of-crime-continue-to-conflict-with-
reality/ft_16-11-16_crime_trend/)

~~~
gmarx
[https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/latest-crime-statistics-
rel...](https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/latest-crime-statistics-released)

~~~
gmarx
violent crime up 3.9% in 2015 though still down from 2011

