Maybe it's a generational thing? I'm in my 20s and I'm much more likely to click on buzzfeed news than the new York times or something.

Also like many of my friends, I get about 90-100% of my news from Reddit. I just don't care about visiting individual publications. Doesn't appeal to me.

I think that's because you knew what Buzzfeed News was and if we see other HN comments it looks like many 'here' thought Buzzfeed News publishes only contents like '15 Hedgehogs With Things That Look Like Hedgehogs'; But that's Buzzfeed and not the News site.

It's intriguing that a click bait platform decided to create an investigative journalism site but with the same brand. It's definitely not aimed to get those who don't visit Buzzfeed but to leverage their existing audience, Then again why would someone interested in 'What Is Your Inner Potato?' be interested in reading about human rights abuses?

Hey if that's what they needed to do to fund investigative journalism, I'm all for it.

Investigative journalism is even harder to monetize than regular journalism. For example, you can't really publish a sponsored article.

I agree and In fact that's exactly what I thought when I saw their 'donate' button. It enforces my opinion that the 'Buzzfeed News' is genuinely trying to do some real journalism.

Why wouldn't they be? Just because people read dumb things doesn't mean they are dumb themselves.

I didn't say that, My statement was regarding technical nature of user's interest.

I'm genuinely curious about Buzzfeed's rationale to build a factual news site when their brand represented anything but that i.e. 'Going against what their recommendation engine would typically suggest for their users'.

Because youth culture loves to exist in dichotomy. The stupid clickbait site and the proper news sight being part of the same thing is the appeal. Similar reasoning to how comedy/news has become a booming format. Doing something stupid and doing something serious at the same time is the zeitgeist.

That's very interesting, If true then the recommendation engine would have indeed identified the supposed dichotomy thereby justifying the decision to stick with their brand.

It does generally mean they are interested in dumb things though. The demographics of people who read those are quite a bit different than those who read long form content.

> Also like many of my friends, I get about 90-100% of my news from Reddit.

Doesn’t letting a democratic process decide what news you see worry you? That leads to severe echo chamber problems.

The problem with getting your news from Reddit isn't just the democratic process, if I remember rightly the moderators of the default news subreddits outright spread partisan misinformation using them.

One could argue that viewers count-driven news are just as democratic, except that people vote by viewing/opening/sharing links instead of clicking an upvote button.

Same goes for the echo chamber comment: Most newspapers are not bipartisan either. Reading Reddit is like reading a single source, in a way.

It has to be a mix of things. Anecdotally, regular Reddit usage penetration isn’t that high. Especially not [nearly] all news. It’s def there though and def higher than many other platforms.

I first found out that they were two different operataions when Buzzfeed News started getting invited on to the BBC's news discussion programmes

> I get about 90-100% of my news from Reddit

What subs?

not op but me, politics and worldnews, also other anti-capitalistic subs

Did you mean “also other” as in different actual anti capitalist subs? The two mentioned are huge subs that are at best neoliberal and do not stray far from actual status quo quandaries.

As a casual Reddit user, I know Chapo got banned. I know technically the reasons weren’t for its politics, but lol... Anyway. Are other anti capitalist subs that much against the status quo?

Edit: I liked your pithy comment about being lower class and nothing wrong with that in the Pine phone thread.