News and articles linked on Tildes
I've been thinking about my experience on Tildes with news and articles. It's mostly been seeing high quality content and discussion that I'm happy with. However for the sake of this, I want to discuss avoiding something negative.
Lately I've noticed news and articles with headlines that I feel are biasing in nature and potentially inflammatory.
I would guess that we're all pretty familiar with this method in general. At some point when a forum/aggregate becomes large enough it provides an profitable opportunity for third parties to distribute content. Or an individual is pursuing their fulfillment of a personal ideal.
I have a few suggestion to handle the issues productively.
News sources that put a higher priority on traffic versus their reputation tend to do so consistently. It would be valuable for users to be required to tag the parent domain when posting external links to allow users to discern sources case by case using tags.
Blocking something a news source versus <inciting-phrase> has the benefit of allowing higher quality sources mentioning the same topic to have an impact on the user. That's potentially very valuable in encouraging informed perspective.
Linking news and articles for commercial or personally motivated reasons is posted on subs that have a marginal relation. E.g. Posting a story on Mike Pence denouncing all white men working in agriculture in an agriculture sub. The connection can certainly be made but I don't think that's a good way of organizing that information. I think it would be more productive to post that in a news or news/political thread. Having the ability to choose when we see and engage with that type of content is important. It benefits the individual and encourages healthy and engaged communities.
Blocking users ( I wasn't sure if this existed ) Alternatively, a system for linked content reputation per user. But I think that's a bad solution overall.
I meant filtering users content and comments as a preference for users. I'm not talking about site wide.
I'm curious if other Tilde users agree with my issues or suggestions.
Minor correction: It does support blocking through filter tags right now. I'm suggesting that that without tagging the source, users can't take advantage of this feature.
The method to do it is there, the rules just needs tweaked. I believe Tilde is a community of people that believe in their ability to discern what sources they want to be presented with.
I see what you mean, I wasn't clear. I'm saying it would be a good thing for the system to work in a way to allow individuals to filter sources effectively by requiring a source tag.
Currently, this sounds like a solution in search of a problem. I haven't seen many click-bait headlines here and I'd rather wait to see what particular issues crop up in this space rather than trying to solve them preemptively.
As others have said, it's really hard to discuss this meaningfully without some concrete examples. If you don't want to use an actual example from the site, can you make one up for illustrative purposes?
For example, if Tildes existed when JFK was shot, I can imagine someone posting a link to the NY Times article, but editorializing the headline to "good riddance, thanks Lee Harvey Oswald". Is that the sort of thing you're talking about? Or is it linking to a less-reputable news source where the headline itself was that sort of slanted/biased coverage?
Headline: "Clinton makes ill-advised quip when interviewer confuses Holder, Booker" - Fox News
This wasn't posted on Tildes but it's a good example of why my preference goes towards other websites that present information better and the ability filter based on my preference.
If I hypothetically hated Fox, rationally or not, it would benefit me and everyone else to be able to filter that consistently.
As for the second issue an illustrative example might be posting news about gun violence and race in a sub for guns. I see the connection that person was making but it's probably not what the people in that sub want to see. The type of blending the lines between scopes of discussion degrades the experience of a community forum in my option.
I should have stated in my original post that this can also happen by accident or with well meaning intentions.
Filtering out that sort of news is always an option, but in general my preference would be to try to steer the topic towards more meaningful conversation.
For example, here's a better and less biased source for the same news story, from The Hill.
Currently it can only be done manually by Deimos AFAIK, but topic titles and links can be changed. Admins at Hacker News do this fairly regularly to de-clickbait titles, point to more authoritative sources, etc. I'm sure as the trust / reputation system matures that's something that can be granted to high-level users.
A site feature that's been discussed in the past has been "alternate sources", which would allow adding an additional link, like that Hill article, as an extra sort of metadata, rather than a plain ol' comment. Eventually that might allow "promoting" an alternate source to be the primary source, if a sufficient number of trusted users marked it as more reliable / trustworthy.
I can see the benefits of your preference. Moving a controversial conversation towards a meaningful one is definitely valuable.
The alternate sources feature sounds interesting and useful for all. I probably overstated the issue a bit because I'd be fine with required source tags and filters for users (If that doesn't exist)
Nitpick, but an important one - controversial conversations can still be very meaningful. The Fox News article you mentioned as an example seems not just controversial, but unnecessarily inflammatory and thus unlikely to be very meaningful.
One of the goals of Tildes is to apply the principle of charity across the site, and I try to extend that to articles I post as well. The issue with the Fox News article isn't so much that they're biased, it's that they seem to not be extending the principle of charity towards Hillary Clinton and her actions.
It's a good nitpick. Controversial discussions have the potential to be very meaningful.
The issue with the Fox News article isn't so much that they're biased, it's that they seem to not be extending the principle of charity towards Hillary Clinton and her actions.
That seems close to what I still see as just bias. I could be missing a more subtle point. But if they continually don't extend that charity for some reason, isn't it bias?
Yep, that'd certainly be a sign of bias. The distinction I'm trying to draw is that a link could be biased, but still interesting, informative, and start a meaningful discussion.
Like most other people here, I'm having a lot of trouble coming up with examples of clickbait headlines or editorialised titles I've seen here here. And, I would notice: I'm one of the select few people here with the ability to edit titles, so I'm always subconsciously keeping half an eye out for problems like this. But I can't remember any. I've edited only two or three titles in the past month or so since I got this ability. One was a title here in ~tildes that was vague to the point of being misleading. There was another title, but it was on another text topic (not an article). The only title I've edited for a posted article was about archaeology, of all things: the person who posted it had misread the article slightly, and listed "tea" as one of the items that archaeologists discovered when they meant "bitter vetch".
So, I'm confused that you're concerned about bad titles here.
Of course, what you're describing is not a Tildes problem. It's a problem with the sites that Tildes users get their headlines from.
Some people already do this. I've asked about it myself. However, I don't do it, and I don't understand why it would need to be done.
Combining these two complaints of yours, it seems like you basically want to set up your own little filter bubble which excludes articles from sources you don't approve of. "I don't like xyz.com, so I don't want to see their articles or headlines on my Tildes front page." Am I understanding this correctly?
A few people here have the ability to move topics from one group to another. If something turns up in an unsuitable group, one of those people will see it and move it somewhere more suitable.
I have seen one and only one example of someone posting here for commercial or personally motivated reasons - and even that was a borderline case. I referred them to Deimos for him to review and act on. In future, there will be a 'report' feature for us to use, instead of having to send private messages to Deimos (which he's okay with receiving!).
Yes, I think if source tags were required on this site, or source based blocking as a user preference by whatever means was implemented, It would benefit users.
My filter bubble would be little. I don't have a problem with most sources. I think CNN and Fox tend to be of the lowest quality so I would prefer not to read them if possible. You're understanding me correctly, I think some sources should be ignored.
Thank you for clearing that up. So all your remarks about bad headlines is a red herring. You don't want us to find a way to fix bad headings. Your real request is to have a way to filter out topics based on their sources.
I assume that this will happen.
Users can already filter topics based on tags.
There has been discussion about automatically adding tags to topics that identify their source.
If you combine these two features, you'll have source-based tags that you can filter on.
I'm glad to hear you think it will happen. I started by suggesting that users are required to add tags for sources but obviously automated is preferred.
And a red herring? I regret whatever I've done to been treated with this much suspicion.
A "red herring" isn't sinister: it's just a misleading clue. (It's a common English idiom.) It means you raised the wrong topic and accidentally gave people the wrong impression of what you want to talk about.
The term implies intention. An idiom for an intentional act meant to mislead.
Stalking horse specifies a false pre-text.
I'm sorry if my use of these phrases implied any malicious intention on your part. I believe that you were sincere in your intentions to fix a problem. I believe the miscommunication on your part was accidental, not malicious.
Thanks, I apologize for assuming. I can see where I went wrong a little better now.
I agree with your idea but the implementation is wrong. The user should not have to perform any additional action to tag the post, that just opens up extra attack surfaces, either deliberately or from sheer laziness. Nobody wants to pretag their post with extra stuff, especially not when there's a good chance that the tags are being used to exclude their post from people's feeds.
Instead, tildes should strip the top level domain from the link and automatically initialize the post with a source tag. So a fox.com/blah-blah-blah gets a "fox.com" tag, and you can filter out anything with a "fox.com" tag. All of this without any user intervention required, and thus minimal friction.
I could be imagining things, but I vagally remember their being talk of adding web domains to the filters. Right now any link posted usually gets a greyed and in brackets domain and a date, right next to it. No need for user input here.
And yeah sure you should be allowed to filter out stuff your not interested in seeing. That's the whole point of tagging.
A collaboration with a news voice type application could be really interesting. The problem that apps like that have is that all the comments are low tier shitposting. It would be interesting to bring something like that here.
Sorry what do you mean by a "news voice application" ? Can you give an example?
I didn't notice the space I put it when I was commenting. Here is a link: https://newsvoice.com
That's a fair question but I have to respectfully refuse for benefit of this discussion. I think the nature of the topic allows for perceiving it as current or potential.
My personal preferences and standards for journalistic integrity are not relevant to what I'm claiming and proposing. And further, linking to individual users would be unfair and might potentially incite a direct confrontation that ultimately would muddy the waters of the discussion to the detriment of everyone.
I'm glad you mentioned this. I think what is so valuable here is that these issues are so common (Edit: On the Internet in general). Every person has individual preferences and standards for content. Regardless of what they might be, we all benefit from being thoughtful on how we do so.
I apologize for being unclear. You pointed out that I didn't provide any examples. I wrote my response to highlight that this topic doesn't require any because it's about a common experience that can be discussed broadly, that was what I was saying was valuable.
I intended to convey that the experience was common on the Internet in general, not only here, the consequences of problems are best considered before the issues arise. It can occur anywhere at the right time with the right circumstances.
Can't you think of time where your reaction to a headline was "Wow, this seems biased to cause a reaction"?
Tildes in on the Internet which contains other sites that have developed the problem I described.
Tildes may not have the problem now depending on your individual views but preparing for problems before they occur do is practical.
Or me! I'm the most prolific poster here (behind only Deimos himself), so if there are "headlines that I feel are biasing in nature and potentially inflammatory" on this website, it's almost certain that @Parameter can find some examples in my posting history. Let's drag out those examples and analyse them to find out what's going wrong.
I've actually always enjoyed the content you provide and have absolutely no issues with any of it.
Based on what I've seen from you, I believe your intentions and standards are good.
Thank you, but... you seem to have switched your focus from the content to the person posting the content. Which is it? Is this topic of yours really a stalking horse for finding problematic people rather than problematic titles?
It keeps being pointing out that I had not provided a specific example of what I thought was an issue.
I explained that I didn't want to discuss my issues specifically and the reasons why.
I responded to you because you thought I would be likely to find an example, and also because I thought you would be a good example of a user that I don't think is demonstrating the issue.
I'm sorry, I'm not exactly sure what you're implying by stalking horse. I feel like I've been moderately successful in keeping this geared towards no one in particular because this isn't meant to be a trial.
But that doesn't help! If we want to fix a problem, we need to identify the problem first. We need to see what's going wrong to find ways of fixing it or preventing it. Focussing on a place/person where there are no problems isn't helpful.
I mean that, when you tell me my intentions are good, it makes it sound like people's intentions are important to you. If I read between the lines, that implies that maybe the real problem isn't bad titles; maybe the real problem is bad people. Like everyone in this thread has said, if we're going to fix a problem, we need to identify it first - so I'm wondering whether the real problem here is bad titles or bad people.
Okay, that's fair, responding to you that way wasn't very useful.
It's "bad people posting bad information for bad reasons" Of course I think intentions vary. And I think they matter in a broader context but ultimately it's about what you post, and none of it strikes me as pushing an idea too hard for emotional or other reasons.
Would this have been completely different if I said "I've never seen a questionable source or questionable motives here yet but the problem may arise so how might it be handled...."?
Everything else in the post would be similar. I don't understand the contingency on the specifics of my anecdotal experience.
Probably. For starters, you would have prevented everyone asking for examples.
You started this discussion by saying "I've noticed news and articles with headlines that I feel are biasing in nature and potentially inflammatory". And you posted this topic in ~tildes - which, as @Bauke said elsewhere, implies that this is a problem you have seen here on Tildes. This naturally makes people want to see these examples of problems here on Tildes, especially when they can't remember seeing these examples for themselves. And, then it turns out that the reason noone else has seen these bad headlines here on Tildes is because they don't exist here on Tildes.
That misunderstanding derailed your whole discussion before it even started.
However, then you would have a different problem. People would say that there's no need to solve a problem that doesn't even exist - like when @Archimedes wrote "this sounds like a solution in search of a problem".
My post ended in a question and I received satisfying responses to it.
I'm fine with having the nature of the question questioned but I think the reasons I wasn't able to respond with specific cases were clear. You may think that's absurd or unproductive, and maybe so but it's how I've said I'm comfortable talking about this.
It's regretable for the discussion but that should have been the end of it if you really flatly disagree and there's nothing productive left to work out.
Let's get this straight, you're posting your personal observations and asking for ideas on how to fix an issue you think is there. But you can not be bothered to even provide any kind of references to underscore your argumentation? Instead you're just gonna rely on people to do that for you?
That's not discussion, that's asking us to do your homework.
Ah, I wasn't aware that it was being developed. Thank you for your perspective. I'm glad you've been satisfied with everything so far.
Bad: "GAB’S DEMISE IS JUST THE BEGINNING OF A HORRIFIC NEW ERA OF FAR-RIGHT EXTREMISM"
Actual headline: "Trump vows executive order to end birthright citizenship, a move most legal experts say would run afoul of the Constitution"
Tildes headline: "Trump eyeing executive order to end citizenship for children of noncitizens born on U.S. soil"
Good: "Pentagon sending 5,200 troops to border"
"Humanity has wiped out 60% of animals since 1970, major report finds"
"Special counsel Robert Mueller accuses opponents of offering women money to make 'false claims' about him"
The bad have obvious bias in the headline with the language they use. The latter are just conveying the facts. Or don't change the meaning of the headline if the content is political in nature.
That supposedly "bad" headline you quoted about Gab's demise is from an opinion piece, not a news article. I don't think it qualifies: we wouldn't expect opinion pieces to be neutral.
The actual/Tildes headlines you're comparing about Trump's executive order aren't necessarily problematic. If we look at the URL of the article itself, we see that it includes "trump-eyeing-executive-order-to-end-citizenship-for-children-of-noncitizens-born-on-us-soil". I've often observed that the URLs of news stories incorporate words from the stories' headlines. This therefore indicates that the story originally had a headline saying something like "Trump eyeing executive order to end citizenship for children of noncitizens born on US soil" - which is, word for word, the title used on Tildes for that topic. News sites have been known to revise their headlines after the fact. This may have happened here: the submitter posted the article with the original title, and then the news site revised the title. Anyway... even saying something like Trump is eying an executive order is not really problematic. It might be colloquial wording, but it's not biassed.
Something I've noticed over the last few years, maybe the last decade or so, is how many people seem to be unable to distinguish between news, opinion, polemic and editorial pieces.
I'm not quite sure why this is, but I'd put some of it on new media. Print newspapers always had clear sections, while internet publications seem more inclined to mix opinion pieces in with news reporting.
If all you've ever known is a hodgepodge of different journalism being put on your front page it's going to make it hard to differentiate.
As the one who submitted that article ... I have to agree, it's an awful headline. I thought the opinion piece was interesting enough to share though, and decided against editorialising the headline.
(Actually that's not entirely true. Vanity Fair had the headline in all caps, so I decided to rewrite it with more sensible capitalisation. I didn't chance any of the words though.)