Outrage existed long before internet. Daily tv news, newspapers, gossips at work, coworker with totally opposite world view, etc, were all great sources of outrage. At smaller scale, true, but living without internet doesn’t create perfect world.

And of course there's the "trending" sidebars, and ads and other stuff that gets injected into your timeline without you asking for it.

So things bleed in no matter how careful you are. The platforms are designed to drag you in and outrage you. Trying to avoid that is a constant battle - and you're going to give in to it from time to time.

My current move is to delete Facebook completely (well, deleted that years ago). I just didn't find as much value there as elsewhere on the internet. And the psychological cost wasn't worth the little value there was there. So, complete deletion.

Twitter, I've deleted the mobile app and I follow no one. I have a separate list of profiles I find interesting. I have to physically go to that list and click on their profiles.

This keeps me out of 90% of the drama and into 90% of the worthwhile content.

It's hard to not look at "trending" but I'm trying. I wish there was a way to turn off "trending" and "timelines" completely.

End result: hugely more productive and psychologically lighter.

twitter.com##section div[aria-label="Timeline: Trending now"]

In Ublock - origin rules to hide the trending sidebar

This will benefit from updates from the author whenever Twitter tries to foil blocking. It comes with a variety of tweaks like a separate timeline for retweets and forcing the latest timeline.

This alone completely changes Twitter for me. Making Twitter mostly original content? Sign me up.

Thanks!

Interestingly, this is the same solution I came to with Twitter, except I don't even keep a list of profiles, I just navigate based on memory and auto-complete in the address bar.

My list is far too long to memorise, though.

And having it separate helps keep me honest (I think my memory would suffer biases) and out of my head.

Mainly though - the act of having to physically click a few times to get to the list gives me a moment of pause where I'm able to wake up and recognise whether I'm about to make good use of twitter or habitually jump into the time-worm-hole we all know.

Then I started unfriending people that just posted stuff that annoyed me.

Then I realized after 3 days there was literally no new posts.

Then I just deleted facebook.

I don't miss it at all.

I've got multiple group chats with friends that I like. People post funny and interesting stuff there and we talk about it without having to deal with what someone's crazy uncle thinks about the topic.

1. Click "Show more" at the bottom of "What's happening"

2. Click the "settings cog" at the top of the page

3. Uncheck "Show content in this location"

4. Click "Explore locations" and choose a location whose language you can't read and you know nothing about.

And to avoid outrage leaking to me via people who end up in my main feed I simply aggressively mute pretty much anyone who talks about politics or similar. Sure, I therefore lack their signal but avoiding their noise more than makes up for that.

twitter.com##section div[aria-label="Timeline: Trending now"]

In Ublock - origin rules to hide the trending sidebar

I just tuned FB to show me stuff I wanted by scrolling past stuff I didn’t, “liking” stuff I did/do, and clicking through to read/respond to comments. It’s mostly friend&family updates, apolitical jokes, animal pics and other anodyne stuff fun to see.

And I block ppl who are on the outrage train, typically just for the 30-day automatic cool down and FB gets the message.

It’s my attention and I don’t have to give it to people.

You can also keywords (which I think you can do with the Twitter app as well) for more granular curation.

I think solutions like this allow one to benefit from Twitter without paying the heavy price that their shitty engagement tactics demand.

No, guy. The concensus is growing around social media being really fucking toxic.

People say social media like Facebook is toxic for the most part because they only deal with toxic people.

But on Twitter, there seem to still be work-arounds. I use lists set to Private, curated for specific experts on particular topics, and many top and/or obscure experts post regularly.

This provides a reasonably straightforward chronological feed, curated to my interest, with well-tuned news and links to key analysis. Just NEVER use the main Home feed (which they do push on you).

IDK how long that feature will stay unpolluted by toxic algorithms, but Jack does seem a bit less determined than Zuck to pollute society.

Constant curation and management is indeed everything. And I remember at my first encounter with real computers in college, when I had a choice of editors, I went for the one with the most powerful features, despite the stated hazards.

I do assume that the audience here tends to the more capable end, so most of them would not be in that 99%, but perhaps I'm mistaken?

Why participate in that in the first place when toxicity grows there like a weed?

It's sufficiently tranquil that my wife now asks to read my feeds. It just took some filter cycles to get there.

Thing is, you're still close to the toxic web you regularly step into it .. and that's why i'm banned from twitter now.

That deserves every ounce of hostility that we can muster. And then some.

They are parasites. It doesn't matter if you "made it work for you".

We're all Slowly Boiled Frogs.

Second of all, there's nothing crazy about what I said. By their own admission they've designed the apps to be addictive.

Would you tell your friends "go ahead, shoot up. have a great time!"? Would you tell your family? What I think is crazy is that we tolerate companies that make products like this.

I guess greed is a powerful force.

[0] we're still having deadly cigarettes sold everywhere you know..

There's not much facebook left over, but oh well.

Yes, they did it by leaving Facebook and Twitter.

That seems like the most obvious strategy for effecting this change.

I don't really understand the line of thinking that somehow you have to will yourself into things rather than changing your environment. I think it misses how predictable peoples' reactions to things really are.

> If you want to spend more time connecting with people you care about, getting rid of facebook feels like throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Sadly, lots of people I care about think it's a moral imperative to broadcast their political position on Facebook on every issue of the day. The people I connect with are skewed pretty heavily towards my own point of view, but that doesn't make it any less corrosive to read what they have to say. Facebook is just too emotionally taxing to follow. (Using Facebook's tools to curate my feed just reminds me how much power I'm giving up to them, which is also depressing.)

I feel so much better with Facebook out of my life. I have the app installed on my phone in case somebody from twenty years ago wants to look me up and message me. That's all it's good for.

I only ever posted positive things like videos of me playing piano and only tried to interact with others in a positive way but I found myself becoming more and more angry over time so I just quit the whole thing and never looked back.

This mostly works for me for Twitter. FB is just garbage so I haven't been on it in months. I don't need to delete it though, I just stopped going.

HN for the most part is still unique. Even when I see a comment I disagree with, most of the time it's articulated well and I can see their point. There are discussions that can happen.

FB is/was just nonsense, and Twitter is more comedy/entertainment than anything.

If facebook, twitter, crypto“currencies” were to suddenly disappear from the face of the Earth, society would be better off significantly.

Nice try Mark

Second rule of HN: don't call out people who you think are astroturfing.

Third rule: astroturf.

Then I promptly close it and remember that's why I don't even bother. Facebook's entire engagement strategy has become outrage and fear. It's what keeps people the most engaged and that's literally the only metric they care about.

I truly believe if Zuck had the option of nuking a third world country to make another billion or solve world peace and Facebook goes away entirely, he'd nuke the country without a second thought. Everything about him strikes me as a sociopath with little to no regard for mankind outside of his personal bubble.

You should check these articles out, they were written in 2018[1][2] and then in 2020[3].

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebo...

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/06/technology/myanmar-facebo...

[3] https://time.com/5880118/myanmar-rohingya-genocide-facebook-...

By just reading a quality daily newspaper and a couple of newsmagazines, I’m better informed than when I was a news junkie with cable news on in the background and news websites refreshing on my phone.

“Breaking news” is broken. Print media, especially weekly newsmagazines, have the luxury of time to actually think about their coverage and provide adequate research and follow-up. Conversely, space is limited, so if it’s not adding value, it gets chopped.

Live news, on the other hand, needs to alternate between being first to report, then filling time until something else occurs, all while making whatever is occurring seem more important than it really is.

I studied journalism in undergrad, and I have never understood why people are so drawn to watch these national 24hr 'news' channels. During a major crisis, sure, but day in and day out? I just don't get it. There just isn't that much that happens at a non-personal level (personal meaning self-, family-, friend-, work-oriented) each day. In terms of staying "up to date," I still am not clear on why this is important to do daily at a national-focused level, but if it's important to you, it can be done in a few minutes by reading a brief recap. If you do want a more traditional news cast, PBS News Hour is a good one.

But with these 24 hr networks, given how little of import happens on an average day, most of the time what you are being shown are not facts, but opinions. And these networks are all owned by massive, massive megacorps. Not sure why anyone is interested in getting drip fed opinions that originate, however loosely, from these conglomerates.

They try to get you to buy into them by convincing you it's important to "stay informed," but never really explain why. They play on your desires to be a good citizen, to be seen as intelligent, to feel 'serious.' If staying informed is important, it's most important at a local level, where your real connections can help you have a real impact. People are so focused on what all the senators tweeted yesterday that they are missing the real problems, issues, etc. that they could help address in their local communities. In this sense, news might not come from media at all -- and here is where social media could actually have real value.

The common explanation you hear everywhere, even here on HN, is that citizens "staying informed" is the key to an effective democracy. While it may be true in the abstract, using this as an argument for 24h news - or even daily news - is quietly omitting the fact that these news sources provide negative information value. Your worldview becomes less accurate, not more. Widespread addiction to breaking news is thus creating a less effective democracy.

Following news makes little sense for keeping a person informed. There are too many completely conflicting sources of news. All the news informs of is what other people who watch the news will have opinions on.

Because the alternative (other than going out for a walk) is watching re-runs of many years old shows or other outright crap.

Personally, I like the 24/7 radio news channel of the local public broadcaster ("B5 Aktuell") - news and information program, but no pop music that was bad already when it came out.

Today I don't get live TV but I do pretty much get real-time news through Twitter, etc.

I also really like Foreign Policy. Despite its name, it’s not really a specialist publication, just a general overview of global current affairs with a bit of a policy focus.

The Guardian Weekly has great international coverage. Its editorial stance is also less overt than it once was (far more measured than the website). There are still occasional stories and writers that make my eyes roll, but it also covers really interesting global stories I don’t find anywhere else.

My daily newspaper is the Sydney Morning Herald. I’ve been based in Australia since travel restrictions hit, and I’m really happy with the paper. It seems to be just as good as it was a decade ago when I was last based here.

Contrary to popular opinion, there’s plenty of quality print journalism out there.

You just need to read an individual paper for a while to internalise the house style and (with the notable exception of The Economist) get to know the individual predilections of each journalist. That level of engagement with the paper and its writers is not something you get from skimming Google News, but I really feel it’s at the heart of getting the most from journalism.

Just buy a particular paper or newsmagazine for a month or two, and see if it’s for you. One local/national and one with a global focus is all you need. If you find them, you’ll hopefully be set for years.

Secondly there is also their Tech section which compared to politics / economics / finance ..., I can as an insider judge its quality. It stands out among the rest IMO. I also like the FT for similar reasons.

>their Tech section ... stands out among the rest

this is some hardcore Gell Mann sorcery right here

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/65213-briefly-stated-the-ge...

867 is either implying that because something you know is good you judge the rest likely to be good.

Alternatively they are being sarcastic because they think The Economist's tech section is poor.

yes it's my own opinion and I don't consider myself to be an authority on these other subjects, so my only tools are intuition or trying to piggyback on people I think (or was told) are authorities. (but both are blunt tools since if I can't judge the subject my trust in others who I think know those things is equally questionable)

Maybe their wealthier audience means that they're not racing to the bottom for clicks. Maybe the people in charge know to run a business that gives people what they want without alienating half of potential customers. Maybe something else entirely. Whatever it is, it's working, and I hope it stays that way.

The answer was no to everything single one. That was pre-covid, and sometimes the news are relevant, but you can mostly do a quick checkup once a week. Prefer something in text form that you can scan over.

I don't really need a constant drip feed of all the terrible things going on in the world. Most of it doesn't affect me, and only serves to make me feel worse about humanity

Also, I have a second account for "open" discussions and work-related stuff that I barely use. It would be awesome if one could set certain tweets in a locked account to "visible for everyone".

How do you measure outrage?

- When living and interacting locally I think folks moderate their views a bit - call it "politeness"?

- Views locally are somewhat more homogenized?

- For better and worse, I'm not sure you'd last that long in Caribbean if you were just a twitter bomb thrower, even if justified - my impression was even things like whistleblowing would not be very well received (ie, if I'd complained about various govt officials not being at their desks when they should have been - it wouldn't have come over well). This may be wrong and certainly has changed as folks become more aware of what should and shouldn't happen.

I find it very beneficial, and it definitely helps broaden you general outlook on these things. I used to follow the news pretty closely, now I just get the headlines once a day and move on with my life.

But as always it's a rather privileged position. I'm a high-wage childless white dude with a French passport, I don't have a lot to fear from politics. If things go bad here for some reason I can just move somewhere else, a luxury the vast majority of human beings don't have.

Having the possibility not to care is a luxury, in a way.

I try to never bother with 'celebrities'. They are glorified nothings. Actor X is using phone from ABC company, only because they paid him to pose holding one. Not because it has anti-matter/matter fusion technology. Also most celebrity events do not affect any of our lives. They divorce? pity.. but still.. don't care. Model X went to a party? good for her (wear a mask!) but still.. don't care.

> Having the possibility not to care is a luxury, in a way.

I remember the Minimalists once said "most crises, aren't". There is wisdom in that phrase. Lack of immediate exposure to 'news', filters out most of the non-crises and the unecessary drama. The important news will stick around after 48 hours/days/weeks (Sollarwinds, unemployment rise, COVID, a major shift in political events, etc.)

With that said, a quick scroll through a couple of news-worthy outelets (BYOsite) will give you all the info within 60seconds, and will give you the opportunity to seek out more - without the spammy exposure of TV/Radio.

Two key things - a power force for stealing my attention is gone, and I’ve dumped faux friends who are really just old acquaintances that felt more intimate because I got to see them on Facebook.

Instead, I actually talk to people who are here.

I recall the film 'Network' with its "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore" thread.

Among other messages.

Unless you're suggesting that social media outrage is productive and helps people to accomplish something meaningful in their own way, you're not actually addressing the OP's comment, you're addressing an unrelated idea that you've heard in the past.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_movement_(culture)

HFT is the perfect example of the benefits of being fast, literally by trading faster, not necessarily better, billions in profit are made. In other fields, first-movers often have a massive advantage, AWS for example.

Just look at Europe, things are slow and rather relaxed here... and as a result they've missed out on about the last 3 generations of technology.

I think many people won't be able to keep up, but the future of evolution is probably people who can sit still for days on end, just consuming information non-stop, with the ability to react very quickly as soon as the information signals opportunity for a reward. Some sort of really autistic apex predator stuff.

Ironically, even though computers can do so many tasks faster and better than humans, one would think we could all relax and let the computers work, but instead the trend seems to be, that we constantly have to be even faster in the remaining fields where computers are not yet superior.

The result of for-loops and automation hasn't been that humans no longer have to rush around doing mundane tasks, but rather that now we have to rush around writing for-loops and fixing all the bugs introduced by rushing... and so it continues...

When I was visiting (5 years ago):

- The trains didn't work

- People printed out google maps instructions instead of using a network connection because data connections were bad/expensive

- I had to sign my name to pay with a card at gas stations. I couldn't use an electronic payment card, only credit cards worked.

Now these are just examples off the top of my head. In my home country of Finland, the trains work, internet and utilities work (we don't have blackouts), payment is usually done by NFC for small amounts, card readers (with pin) for larger amounts.

If you're talking about industrial technology, I don't have enough information to compare. But I would assume Europe has better manufacturing. After all, Germany makes all the cars that end up in the US.

I just pulled up a list of the top 25 selling cars in the US and there are 0 German brands on that list. Plus most of the 'German' cars sold in the US are also made in the US.

The export is substantial though:

https://www.acea.be/publications/article/eu-us-automobile-tr...

they've never broken 500k (at least going back to 2005).

edit: Volkswagen Group sell in the 500k-650k cars range

Lack of same day/instant money transfers between bank accounts so everyone uses paypal which is not a real bank and it can block your money for 180 days for their "investigations"

Casinos make billions in profits too, but just like HFT they contribute nothing to the productive economy and are a blood-sucking leech.

People living in these "slow", offline first places are self selecting, and it's not for everyone.

My parents moved to a tropical island, have been there for decades now, they love it and will never go back. I also grew there but left at the first occasion and more than half of my schoolmates did the same.

IMO living there requires a distance from fast paced, online, strongly information based social discourse. If you don't have that you're in for a bad time.

Folks work pretty hard in Caribbean, but when I was there (a fair while ago), I also worked dang hard. But you absolutely felt like you were in a bubble. You really could imagine that Israel and the Palestinians would have an intifada / war and no one would notice.

You drank after work with the folks you worked with (in west this is a no no for many good reasons), you ate larger group meals, you spent a lot more time outside. I'm just spitballing some impressions. Some of this was efficiency, (group meals are more cost effective?) etc.

There is also an attitude difference. There is a story (probably made up - please fill in correct details) that a group "conquered" one of the islands (maybe Saba?). They took over whatever building, raised whatever flag. And everyone just ignored them. They eventually left.

One thing that's an adjustment is ignoring the rules if they are silly - no one thinks anything of it. And yes, in part because of corruption and rent seeking there are some silly rules so maybe you have to.

Absolute downsides as well no question. But I wonder if the folks not on internet just don't care as much about what someone said to someone as the rest of us.

In the West, this is a conventional thing that many people expect.

It's like you've never been to a Western country`

Your right - I should have said US (and maybe just progressive areas).

I would guess it made up, because when people conquer stuff, they tend to have actual material goals and need. Starting from basic - their army needs to eat. The way you get that food is to take it from people who are there. They need wood and what not, if you are the armed one, you force local population to get it for you. When people used to run from incoming armies, it was not for fun. It was because the armed men tend not to ignore you.

The miracle there is not island people ignoring incoming people. The miracle there is the supposed conquerors being content with raising flag, without trying to take actual benefit from it. I guess in some rare situations they would conquer thing for trolling/emotional purposes, but generally the goal is control and things.

All it takes is one moron with delusion of grandeur.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Bucket

Pretty reasonable cause to start a war I could imagine, back then.

> Russia with Crimea, whose ownership value is enormously negative?

Russia does not see expansion of own territory as negative value. Also, Russians are very much making changes in Crimea.

I heard that Travis Kalanick coded the initial code base of Uber in Varkala beach in Kerala[1],[2].

[1] https://www.gadgetsnow.com/tech-news/guess-what-uber-ceo-tra...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varkala

IMHO, if that person who was working their ass off was a genius and an outlier, then their contributions are a huge net benefit to society and we/society should reward and applaud them.

However, most people are average or below average, so their contributions are extremely unlikely to move the needle. So from the point of view of the person chilling on the beach, yeah sure, do whatever makes you happy, but as far as real accomplishments go, its a wash between them and the non-genius hard-worker. Just my opinion! :)

(Writing this as a non-genius average person)

if i just knew where that corner is ...

Just like voting has almost zero effect. However, is not voting wise?

In what direction would society move if nobody watched the news?

As for voting, I find these tools that ask you questions and tell you which candidates/parties best match your beliefs to be enough to know how to cast my vote. Not that it really matters, as you've said but it still lets me do my civic duty without the years of stress and anxiety in-between elections and during the elected's mandate. I'll leave it up to other to get needlessly outraged by following the news.

We need more people voting and speaking to their representatives, and fewer people outraged about something some random brainless celebtrity said.

If you want to be educated voter, pick any journal or periodical like The Economist or The New European. Their journalism will actually cover an issue in some depth, from whatever is their biased perspective.

But those are news too. Why are we judging news based off the worst examples? If you have a problem with the news you are consuming, find some other source. Don't write off all news consumption as bad.

I do not watch or read news daily, so when I went in a vacation at the hotel I had nothing else better to do then open the TV. There was some big outrage that the president mumbled something racist(he was inside a car and people were lips reading) - again not in US. I realized what I was missing by not watching TV, I am ignoring all the useless drama. The other part of the news that is not politics is also mostly irrelevant crap.

The thing is that there is almost nothing we can do as individuals, elections are 4 years apart and sometimes people organize and manage to change the prime minister with big protests but that is when something so big happened that even I knew about it.

What could work much better is a weekly summary that ignores things that happened this week, so it will be like a filter for minor stuff and all the events reported would have been better digested and all involved parties would have had the time to respond.

There are some rare events that should not be ignored, and this are large enough that will surface, a local example is this incident that eventualy caused protests, some resignations but probably nothing actually major changed to improve safety(unfortunately we have a few horrible incidents related with fire) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colectiv_nightclub_fire

The opposite of that I do would be me having to read or watch 3 different reports on same maybe relevant stuff and decide what is my favorite interpretation.

Add on top of that the propaganda by US to start their wars by fabricating stuff, now when I read some report about 1 million people in camps in China I will always have a doubt the numbers and facts are real, or the interview with persons could be fabricated, so with news from far away is double pointless to be on top daily, is nothing you can do about it today so it can wait a week and you can never be sure it is not manipulation.

In general after decades of working with Internet and technology, I realize that I enjoy life (not work) better when there is no Internet. Of course, it is nice to have Internet to have occasional communication with friends and family not in the surrounding area.

On the other hand, life becomes utterly miserable with a little internet. It's an all-or-nothing kind of deal.

If the internet is entirely gone, I'll read a book or do something else.

It was actually quite nice being forced to disconnect. It's almost funny how quickly you go from wanting to know what is going on in the world to not really caring anymore, when it's out of mind you don't really think about it.

I have spend a fair bit of my life in countries where I don't speak the language particularly well. I like the fact that the subtleties of advertising and the spin put on the news often go over my head, but I realise especially during the last year that I consume way to much junk information on the internet.

If over 65 year olds count for half of the 7% (25% of 50Million), does poor rural internet and poverty count for a lot of the rest.