I got a lot of my headlines from reddit. Due to the impending death of my favorite app (Sync for Reddit) however, that’s coming to an end.
I’m now realising my Reddit experience had deteriorated slowly, just doomscrolling the hours away wasn’t healthy and I’m even kind of glad this is a good reason to end it. However, reddit has been really useful for news, especially the comments (taken with the right amount of skepticism) could be very informative.
I hope Lemmy builds something similar, but the defederation of beehaw’s news has been a setback.
What would be a good alternative, going forward, for getting news and backgrounds from varied, trustworthy en unbiased sources?
You’re right you gotta bring your bucket of salt for all them pinches, but it was often the case that if someone posted a bullshit answer there’d be a repudiation to it; if that one was bollocks? Someone else chimed in. Eventually you have enough to aggregate some semblance of the truth.
The pitfall is relying on votes to do the vetting for you, and reluctance to research under your own power in lieu of citations. Cumbersome work, but if you really want the real picture it’s never 100% painless.
I agree that there was generally a consensus in the comments, but that doesn’t mean the consensus was correct. Often, different subreddits would come to different conclusions. I think there is a big risk of falling in to the “conformation bias” trap when relying on community consensus.
In not sure if there’s a better way to determine the truth, though.
I found it difficult to describe how exactly the comments were informing, sometimes even moreso than the article itself, but this is exactly it.