Comment by alisonatwork
2 days ago
Unfortunately most of what people understand as "social media" is not decentralized, and most of the biggest names on Substack in particular come directly out of "traditional media", which is exactly why it's not a real alternative. Substack is just another newspaper except now readers have to pay for every section they want to read.
The difference between traditional and social media is not just technical. Traditional media hosts a profession (journalism) with a code of ethics, editorial oversight, minimal standards, a mission of truth-seeking. It's easy to be cynical but those things have generally served us well. The Substack jungle is not a good replacement.
> Traditional media hosts a profession (journalism) with a code of ethics, editorial oversight, minimal standards, a mission of truth-seeking
Which traditional media outlets follow those things nowadays? Genuine question, looking for information and news to consume.
almost all of the major ones? voices on the internet have lead people to believe that the journalists at major publications are biased, and that somehow also means they're lying and unethical.
what's interesting is that those opinions are taken at face value without ever happening to do any practical evaluation about traditional media outlets.
the reality is, if you ever read any alt-news publication it becomes evident extremely quickly how deprived of any standards those publications actually are.
Yes, they get paid to spill out stuff that materially benefits those that do the paying, there’s another name for that that I won’t use on a Sunday.