getting dumber by the minute
explains why american politics is so dumb
The worst part is that for a too long amount of time, tiktok was more accurate and reliable than anything else here.
My parents gets news from Wechat
So much “Taiwan Taiwan Taiwan”, “Democrats Ruin NYC” “ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT living in FREE HOTEL” 🤦♂️
Like calm down lmao, we aren’t even in China anymore, what’s the obsession with “reunification”, and like hate for dems is so weird, since their main opponent literally wants to kick us out.
When I used Reddit I got news from there. If news sites weren’t so fucking atrocious to use I might browse them directly. Plus, it’s not like legitimate news isn’t shared on social media. AP is generally considered pretty unbiased and reliable and they have a TikTok account.
I find a bigger issue for me is the lack of RSS. I refuse to subscribe to some dumb social media service simply to get links to your stories.
RSS being cut out means so many are forced to use some other bullshit just to get some semblance of a feed and that includes a whole bunch of other shit and not just what you want.
apnews.com is the only news site I visit outside of what lemmy links for me. Know what’s weird? There is SO much on there that could be linked here, but people post the same story 40 times.
The UN walkout? Beat to death, but I hadn’t seen a solid video until I went to AP. I was thinking it wasn’t such a big deal as the headlines, videos and comments made out. FFS, the best video is right there!
Don’t blame them, when the average interaction on news sites is completely unwelcoming.
My thoughts entirely. One of my favorite ironies is The Washington Post saying “Democracy Dies in Darkness” as they prevent you from reading their news article without having a subscription.
The new fascist propaganda machine. Algorithm controlled by the GOP and Trump cronies.
deleted by creator
And that is the reason behind previous bans and current forced sale to US oligarchs.
And that would have been bad enough before Oracle started running the show. With Larry Ellison (a.k.a. Satan wearing a poorly tailored human meat-suit) deciding what people should be reading, it’s downright terminally moronic.
People are choosing stupidity
Is it because it’s easier than getting proper news from reputable sources or something?
Not to defend the stupidity that does exist on Tiktok, but reputable sources often post their news and extra content on Tiktok, and Tiktok often the only way to access it. “Proper news” in the form of articles tends to be more jargony and needs to confirm to a professional tone. Not to mention, they simply take more time to produce.
Examples of extra content include fact checks, debunking right wing conspiracy theories, longer versions of interviews that didn’t make the final cut, or simple clarifications in the form of Q and As.
E.g. see the Tiktok accounts for the BBC, The Guardian, the Financial Times, etc
Getting news from reputable sources generally involves reading and ~25% of American adults are functionally illiterate.
Probably not the main cause of people turning to TikTok for news but if you drew a ven diagram of the two groups, I wouldn’t be shocked if there was an awful lot of overlap.
~25% of American adults are functionally illiterate
That ~25% of American adults is too dumb to deserve to vote. You should be able to show some kind of basic intelligence and common sense in order to have a say in how a country should be run – it should be based on merit. I even have a name for that: meritocracy!
That idea gets too sticky, too fast. Look up Southern literacy tests for black people. Complete nightmare.
Reminds me of my friend applying for his concealed weapon permit in Alabama. You had to submit a form, and a picture, to the local sheriff. Told him, “Good thing you’re a middle-aged white guy!”
Still, I feel ya. Over half of Americans read at a 6th-grade level and our President speaks at a 4th-grade level. Obama spoke at a 10th-grade level and the hate wasn’t all down to racism. Americans are so fucking dumb, they were insulted, felt he was talking over their head to be a snotty, over-educated, “I’m better than you.”, type. Or as we call it in the South, “uppity”.
His tweets have a 5th grade reading level, there’s a connection for sure. Even Facebook and Twitter and other social media requires some level of reading.
4th-grade I’ve heard. In any case, American media had been aiming for 5th-grade long before Trump. Maybe it was 6th? In any case, I learned that in the 90s.
In general, media companies usually target a 5th grade reading level to ensure most can read and understand the stories.
His tweets definitely aren’t a 5th grade level, because they’re clearly below that level.
People aren’t taught to use critical thinking skills anymore.
Texas GOP official platform had called for an end to critical thinking education. Looks like they took such a beating over that stance as to flip a 180.
We support education in the arts and music and building critical thinking skills, including logic, rhetoric, and analytical sciences. We support quality vocational educational training that imparts skills needed for meaningful post-graduation employment.
Doubt that translates into real-world policies.
When they are, US Nazis puts a stop to it.
I think it’s just that a content creator, especially one with the ability to come off authentically, comes off as more trustworthy than a media corporation, even one well known for its trustworthiness.
Part of me misses my childhood local paper. Especially the game we played in middle school of finding the spelling and grammar errors. Honestly though I do think we need to have a revival of subscribing to local newspapers
My middle school social studies teacher used to give extra credit on things if we brought in a newspaper clipping with a spelling error circled. I didn’t understand until years later that getting us to read the paper was the goal, but it sure worked on me.
the headline sounds fucking scary, but i wonder what the reality really is. i am in my fourties, i remember news being printed on the paper, and i understand the media world and what the difference is between trustworthy media and tabloid.
still, lemmy is often times the first place where i see specific news, esp. regarding us politics (i am from eu) - but i choose links to reputable sources (which is not that hard, because lot of times the same info is linked 5 times from the different sources) and verify if needed.
so “gets news from social networks” would sound more ominous than i think my reality is. i don’t have tiktok, so i have no idea what the reality is there.
Reddit or lemmy news related stuff is more similar to a potentially problematic curated RSS that happens to have a comment section than influencers giving the news.
Tiktok seems to lean more towards being a video sharing platform filled with aspiring content creators with followers who can get deeply infatuated with them and become their life coach in a sense than a RSS alternative.
So the least harmful impact of those types of platforms is making something like labubu become viral and explode in visibility and popularity, and the more harmful one being what lot of podcasters have done taking on the role of new anchors or science exports to their huge captive audience.
So if going back to the old days most similar thing would probably be getting all your news from what your neighbor Bob says.
