I found that idea interesting. Will we consider it the norm in the future to have a "firewall" layer between news and ourselves?
I once wrote a short story where the protagonist was receiving news of the death of a friend but it was intercepted by its AI assistant that said "when you will have time, there is an emotional news that does not require urgent action that you will need to digest". I feel it could become the norm.
EDIT: For context, Karpathy is a very famous deep learning researcher who just came back from a 2-weeks break from internet. I think he does not talks about politics there but it applies quite a bit.
EDIT2: I find it interesting that many reactions here are (IMO) missing the point. This is not about shielding one from information that one may be uncomfortable with but with tweets especially designed to elicit reactions, which is kind of becoming a plague on twitter due to their new incentives. It is to make the difference between presenting news in a neutral way and as "incredibly atrocious crime done to CHILDREN and you are a monster for not caring!". The second one does feel a lot like exploit of emotional backdoors in my opinion.
Yea, no thanks. I don't want things filtered based on what someone else thinks I should see.
What if it's based on what you think you should see?
Either it's you deciding as you see it (ie there is no filter), or it's past you who's deciding in which case it's a different person. I've grown mentally and emotionally as I've got older and I certainly don't want me-from-10-years-ago to be in control of what me-right-now is even allowed to see
Or you can update it when you see fit, or go periods without filters to ensure you are still seeing something approximating reality, or base it on people you know personally and currently who you trust, or half a dozen other things that aren't off the top of my head. The point was it's less black and white than you're painting it.
If you're never allowed to see things you don't like, how will you grow and change? If you never grow and change, why would you update your filters?
Then you should probably allow yourself to see some things you don't like. I guess the answer lies somewhere in a middle ground where you both see things you don't agree with and also filter out people known to spout untrue information or unnecessarily emotion-fueled sentiments? I don't like genocide, but that doesn't mean my options are fully head-in-the-sand or listen to non-stop Holocaust deniers....
Pretty close to exactly what we do right now, really but supercharged for the fast-approaching/already here world of supercharged fake news.
Just like diet, some people prefer balancing food types and practicing moderation, and others overindulge on what makes them feel good in the moment.
Having food options tightly controlled would restrict personal liberty, but doing nothing and letting people choose will lead to bad outcomes.
The solution is to educate people on what kinds of choices are healthy and what are not, financially subsidize the healthy options so they are within reach to all, and only use law to restrict things that are explicitly harmful.
Mapping that back to news and media, I’d like to see public education promoting the value of a balanced media and news diet. Put more money into non-politically-aligned news organizations. Look closely at news orgs that knowingly peddle falsehoods and either bring libel charges against them or create new laws that address the public harm done by maliciously spreading misinformation.
But I’m no lawyer, so I don’t know how to do that last part without creating some form of tyranny.
isn't that what the upvote/downvote buttons are for? although to be fair, i'd much rather the people of lemmy decide which things are good and interesting than some "algorithm"
There's a real risk to this belief.
There are elements of lemmy who use votes to manipulate which ideas appear popular, with the intention of manipulating discourse rather than having open discussions.
yeah. you're right.
it's not like i blindly trust the votes to tell me what's right and wrong, but they still influence my thoughts. i could just sort by new, but i feel like that's almost as easy to manipulate.
i guess it comes back to the topic of the post. where and how i get my information is always going to affect me.
i'm sure other platforms are no better than lemmy with manipulating content, but maybe for different reasons. i just have to choose the right places to spend my time.
Yeah this is an "unpopular opinion" but I don't believe the lemmyverse in it's current form is sustainable for this reason.
Instances federate with everyone by default. It's only when instances are really egregious that admins will defederate from them.
Sooner or later Lemmy will present more of a target for state actors wishing to stoke foment and such. At that time the only redress will be for admins to defederate with other instances by default, and only federate with those who's moderation policies align with their own.
You might say, the lemmyverse will shatter.
I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing.
End rant.
I don't think they are talking about an app.
Why would it be someone else? Why would someone assume it, especially here on lemmy?
Why wouldn't I assume it? You think most people would willingly take such measures themselves?
We do everytime we click on a link tagged NSFW or when we go see negative comments.
That really just reenforces my point. Most people aren't setting that up themselves. The app defaults do that. I.e. someone/something else is making that determination. Sure, maybe you can still check out the post if you really want, but how many will do that? Can you change how it works? Depends on the app.
If people want to opt-in to it then I don't really care. I mostly HATE being forced to opt-out of things though.
Well then we can argue about defaults, but in an open source app, I think the point is moot: anyone can make a new version with different defaults.
[some content is masked, change the settings if you want to see it or disable this warning] sounds like an acceptable default over almost anything filterable in my opinion.