Twitter/X is fantastic for breaking news. For example during the first assassination attempt you would find new details on there that would then appear on MSM newscasts one to two hours later.

It also helps immensely to curate lists of interests to help filter out the noise and politics.

Honest question, why is breaking news important? How exactly does knowing unsubstantiated details about an event immediately male one’s life better?

This is what I always wonder. Any time I see a news story (even on MSM) marked as "BREAKING" or "EXCLUSIVE", I'm like... who cares? That just means you either a) rushed to publish without making sure you got your details right, or b) you paid someone to not shop their story around to other outlets (which is gross).

My life would not have been impacted in the least knowing about the Trump assassination attempt a few hours later (or even the next day), rather than minutes after it happened.

The MSM has enough problems these days with journalistic integrity and practices. I don't think the teeming mobs on Twitter are an improvement, though.

It isn't important. The vast majority of "journalism" is as worthless as the vast majority of "discourse" around it. If it doesn't affect you personally, you can likely safely ignore it and if it does affect you personally, you probably won't need the news to tell you about it.

"Breaking news" used to be relevant in that it was news that "broke into" existing programming. It didn't necessarily make people's lives better but at least it tended to cover matters of high national interest like Presidential assassinations or disasters or wars. But now that everything is breaking news all the time everywhere, the term no longer means anything other than being a synonym for "current news," which isn't even really impressive anymore.

Unless it's regarding immediate local emergency that you might need to respond to, breaking news has zero value besides a brain tickle and something to talk about.

If you feel you have any kind of mood or attention challenges, as many now do, you might want to double check if it's something you should be optimizing for.

Hard agree. Nearly nothing outside your real personal life is so important it can't be learnt about tomorrow, or next week.

There are exceptions; if you have a flight booked that day and didn't learn about the Crowdstrike thing till you got there, that'll be a problem, but it would've been a problem regardless of your immediate knowledge of it.

Cripes.

Cripes.

Cripes.

Cripes.

Cripes.

Cripes.

Cripes.

Cripes.

Cripes.

Cripes.

Cripes.

How is your life improved by getting that news minute by minute instead of an hour, or even a day, later?

It’s an excellent question, but I do think you can get valuable insights from seeing how a major political event unfolds in real time, as long as it’s something you’re interested in. It can help you to view the subsequent news bulletins with a critical eye and interest and it can give you a richer depth of understanding than you would otherwise get.

If it’s an event that you’re not particularly interested in, then there’s not much value in getting details in advance.

Another thing, it’s not just hours. Sometimes it’s months (or in rare cases years) before a recurring topic on social media finally makes it to the news, because it’s controversial/narrative-defying, so it takes them a long time to work out how to talk about it. I don’t want to mention specific examples because it would be distracting, but there are a few topics I see mentioned daily/weekly on the news today that were pretty much absent a few years ago, yet were heavily discussed on Twitter at the time, and I am very glad I was aware of them.

or indeed, not at all? :)

There is a marked difference between "Breaking new developments" and misinformation being spread to juice engagement.

Nobody should pretend that Twitter is a place where accurate information travels at light speed. It is in desperate need of moderation and being run by a man with clear monetary incentive to mislead the public.

> Nobody should pretend that Twitter is a place where accurate information travels at light speed.

I agree, but I think a lot of people who use it view it that way.

> It is in desperate need of moderation and being run by a man with clear monetary incentive to mislead the public.

I don't think you wrote that the way you meant to.

At what cost? You would need to monitor your spyware all day to gain any value. I'd rather save the time and read the news more efficiently.

In today's world information overload is a bigger problem than lack of information. It follows that unactionable information is useless.

What is actionable about knowing about the assassination attempt 1-2 hours before others? Did you act differently based on this information? Did you benefit from this sufficiently to weigh up for the time spent on Twitter 20 times a day at the off-chance of catching a breaking newsstory before MSM would?

I don't know how you can possibly say TikTok isn't social media. That seems like a rather absurd claim. What's your justification?

TikTok is 100% social media

Although the line can get interesting. When I was active on Reddit I would argue that Reddit was not SM. From my perspective, Reddit was end stage web forum technology and link aggregators

All the bespoke forums of the late 90s and early 2000s died for the most part and there is now a subreddit for every niche hobby that used to have a forum

This stuff all predates Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, livejournal, that I would argue were new paradigms and the start of what we know as social media

However to anyone not online during those times, Reddit is just another site where people post details of their own lives. Reddit responded by adding profiles and followers and all kinds of pseudo SM features

I haven’t used it much but I think the main feed is very algorithmic, so you swipe for your dopamine without paying much attention to the profile. Because of that it’s not really tied to your identity in quite the same way.

It also seems quite professionalised in that the big content producers fill the feed.

There’s also something about it being video which makes it feel harmful but in a different way than a text based platform.

I tend to think of TikTok as more of an entertainment platform rather than peer to peer social media.

I’m not the target audience though so could be wide of the mark!

The "new" reddit constantly tries to promote brainrot to you when you are in the main feed. You can evade this by never using the main feed. No one wants to let you just read what you want to read.

This is one of the reasons why I have returned to print media. Unfortunately, a lot of magazines and newspapers are also really bad now also. The Wall Street Journal has fallen off a cliff, turning into something between Cosmopolitan and Business Insider, and I am cancelling my subscription this year. The Economist has done a good job keeping up the quality level. The fact that something is in print does not necessarily make it better if all the writers have brainrot or the content is optimized for digital engagement first.

The internet has become a medium for poor people to watch unlimited user-generated episodes of Maury and Jerry Springer. The only internet I really want to use is to work, buy products, and read my email. Getting older is bad enough without the computer trying to make me dumber on top of that.

I don't use it but I find that claim a bit odd. Would you consider YouTube social media technically? I personally wouldn't even though it has social components with comments and personal channels.

Instagram is a must if you want to get any real benefit out of using dating apps in 2024. The only way to talk to anybody without paying is to look at the profile, get their instagram url, and talk over there. I'm an old millennial who basically only uses HN for social media, and unfortunately IG is a must have.

Devil's advocate: Not having an IG let me filter out a lot more unserious matches on said apps.

A dating app subscription is super cheap, like 40 bucks a month. I think it makes more sense to pay that then try and circumvent the system by messaging people through Instagram

Why would you willingly pay the scamming middlemen?

How is it a scam? They are running a service to connect you to other people looking for a relationship. The service works - I found my last 3 girlfriends through dating apps.

I'm not going to message random people's Instagram unsolicited, I would find it annoying to on the receiving end of that. My mother and girlfriend have both complained about receiving unwanted attention from unknown men through social media.

Honestly trying to understand your point of view, do you think dating apps should be free? They definitely aren't free to run.

Presumably your mother and girlfriend don't have their Instagram profiles listed on their dating app profile that say to message them there. Just like there's a very critical difference between a solicited and unsolicited dick pic, if someone is literally asking to be messaged on Instagram, it's different than messaging random people that didn't actually ask to be messaged, especially about crypto scams.

In my post I specifically said "unsolicited". There is of course ethical ways to message people through Instagram, but even in that case it is going to be less efficient then just using the dating app as intended.

Just pay for a subscription to a dating app if you can afford it. It's money well spent when you really want to meet a partner and are struggling to do so IRL. As long as you go for one that doesn't have the Tinder UX of course...

> Reddit feels like it’s growing but I think that avoids the worst of social media.

Really?

Reddit is a cesspool because they drove off the power users in favor of normies who won't block the ads.