Why is this sub just CBC news stories? Does a bot add them all? They are mostly empty with no comments. Makes for a strange feed.
Edit: I think I just need to figure out which way to sort my feed. Sorting by hot gives me almost all CBC.
Edit 2: CBC is great. I am commenting on the state of c/Canada, not the quality of CBC
Be the change you want to see.
Oof, it would be hard to say that out loud with a straight face. But it has some merit.
Most of the posts here are by a small group of people kind enough to repost stuff from their RSS feeds or other aggregators.
Any relevant content is appreciated at this early stage. And only a small percentage of an already small group comment on any platform. As the numbers grow we should see more interaction.
Because of this comment, Im going to comment on every post I see, hopefully I start some conversations… That always entertained me with Reddit reading 2 people talking about some small pointless thing
Agreed, I want the comments, not the links lol
Im going to comment on every post I see
Now I’m picturing your life with a sharpie in hand walking past lamp posts on the street.
What do you think about Taylor Swift not having any Canadian tour dates?
Personally I think it is nothing short of an affront to our Canadian honour, and we should organize a militia to do something about it. I suggest our militia track down her ex boyfriends and start an anti-Swift club.
Even if she did come, she’d just play in Toronto and Montreal anyway. I don’t know why the Alberta MP thinks the west would even be worth her while.
I mean, look at how many sold out shows Garth Brooks played at Rogers Place. Midsummer, Swift could sell out Commonwealth multiple nights.
Did the Alberta MP want her to perform there? That actually makes sense. It would legitimize the area as a go-to destination for artists, and with how famous and sparkling alabaster white-and-blonde Taylor is, I’m sure there’s a lot of local politicians who’d want to spin that into a lot of meaning for their base.
:D It’s a conversation! It’s a human connection! It might not be life-changing, but that gives it some meaning for that tiny moment in time!
Oh, so isn’t bots then? That makes me feel different about it then, haha
You can see who posts stuff and go look at their profiles. There’s onlya few posters here right now and they all look pretty human to me.
I’d also like to point out that as of now (with your post being most recent) only 2 of the last 10 posts here are CBC
Hah. Definitely not bots.
Knowing full well that is what a bot would say.
HELLO FELLOW HUMANS. WE ARE ALL HUMANS HERE.
I could see why you might have thought I was. I kind of info dump before work so it probably looks kind of bot like.
Also, this ain’t CBC, FWIW: https://lemmy.ca/post/846107
r/canada was 90% National Post opinion pieces and constantly manipulated by right wing bots. This is better.
Agree. The Canada sub was horrible on reddit.
I was permanently banned for a sarcastic comment about Danielle Smith. Delicate neo-fascists.
I had a similar experience!
Of course…I caught a ban from r/onguardforthee for hurting some poor snowflake’s delicate feelz. I’m as left as you can get socially. I can understand why the neo-fascist bot herders that rule r/canada would want me gone but I just can’t be part of a sub where it’s all rainbows and unicorns so no one feels bad.
We need more rainbows and unicorns in this world. I hope the ugly that is reddit doesn’t proliferate too easily and too widely.
Yes, it would be nice if we could have a community where civilized discussions based in reality could happen where everyone expressed their onions and everyone listened. r/canada had devolved into one group of people trying to bring a bit of truth and reality to the discussion and another shitting in their hand and throwing it at people while screaming lies and propaganda backed up by bots that downvoted anything that didn’t agree with the echo bunker.
Mods in the sub and reddit proper side with the propagandist chaos actors every time. It’s why I’m happily here on Lemmy.
Some might call them… snowflakes 😂
Some might…
Yeah, it is nice to think we have a chance to have a “normal” mod team here.
I hope it stays that way. r/canada was a dumpster fire. The mods did nothing about the obvious vote manipulation and bots for years but often removed left leaning comments. I used https://www.reveddit.com/ to see when my comments were removed and often sent a note to the mods at r/canada asking why my comments had been removed and what rule they had broken. The answer that I most often got was, “We don’t have to explain it to you.”
By not explaining it, sometimes that is the explanation. 😬
Well, the grass is greenest where we water it, so let’s keep an eye out for the warning signs we had over there.
I think a mix of both sides is best tbh. Wonder if using the description that is included with link posts would be a good spot to include a couple sources from differing views.
I like a mix of sources between left of center (CBC) and slight right (National Post) with highly factual reporting. Ideally I want something on this list with very highly factual reporting and high credibility. Anything below highly factual or outside of the band between left center and right center I’m not interested in.
The National Post opinion section is a dumpster fire of right wing bullshit.
Omg, NatPosts comment section is a sight to behold.
I happened onto my first one this week, and this one guy posted like 4 veild rape threats towards Justin Trudeau in under 15 minutes. Not to mention all the similar previous comments he made on the same post
Like I get it, he’s hawt, but keep it in your pants.
The NatPo comment section is a fascist echo chamber populated by convoy tantrumists, anti-vaxers, anti-maskers, racists, white supremacists, christofascists, and neo-nazis.
The NatPo opinion section is a propaganda wing of the christofascist wing of the Conservative party. It was so bad that the neo-fascist bot herders that ran r/canada flagged it as [Opinion Piece]. When even they recognize it as right wing propaganda you know it’s bad.
Exactly!
A mix of different perspectives isn’t the issue.
A mix of different facts, with one sourced and cited and the other just being angry opinions, is the issue. Those shouldn’t be equated with each other - not just because that angry opinions are cheap to pump. They can easily drown out researched articles.
That’s not to say opinions aren’t important! Many, many real-life experiences get ignored, overlooked, or purposely cast aside, and anecdotal accounts and subjective experiences are all we have. But I take issue with something presenting itself as a factual source of information when it only has very shaky citations, or when it has no citations and brushes it off like, “Well, everyone should know this, and if you don’t, you’re in on it.”
NatPo is propaganda parading itself as news, and that’s dangerous to put on the same level as news outlets that actually research their stories.
I’d argue most major news networks are propaganda parading itself as news. CBC may be more of an exception since they have government funding, though they do still have advertisers and to some degree lose some element of control because of that.
Things like cellphones and internet are a big proponent of most Canadians lives, and the antics that Bell and Rogers gets up to are rarely reported on, or if they are reported on, there is a lot of omissions. It’s no surprise why considering Bell and Rogers own a lot of the news networks.
I’d say a good chunk of Canadian and American news is pretty heavily controlled by mega corporations.
I agree to a large extent! I would add onto that by saying government funding also acts as advertising dollars would, but that because the government has put some value onto transparency and has to be elected, Canadians can have a better chance to identify where the unspoken bias is based on who’s got the wallet.
I would also say that because of all their funding and because of their need to establish themselves as a reliable source of news, CBC has to put a ton of effort into reporting on news that many would call ‘useful’ so that there’s more of a benefit of doubt extended to them when they don’t report on telecoms.
All that to say “let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater,” but the genuinely useful articles and journalistic standards that exist for CBC do also operate in an environment that serves whoever’s funding it. They’re an excellent starting point for awareness, so I’m happy to see their stuff shared, but I’d never recommend having their word be law on what’s “worth” reporting or sometimes even the angle they’re taking while they report on it.
Better than the constant NP opinion pieces on /r/canada
I guess if you want to see different sources, post them
I’m convinced they were posted to rile up the comments. They are not even insightful op-eds one can disagree with. Just angry old man yells at cloud drivel. yet to the top they go
It’s actually painful to open r/canada up just to see another NP article making nonsense arguments upvoted to the top
Honestly, the conversation in this post is what I was looking for lol. I don’t care about the news source.
The only post you’ve submitted here is this one… about the CBC… lol
Perhaps submit non-CBC links? Be the change you want to see.
Yea there just isn’t that much content here, so if someone is posting consistently then their stuff will show up more
Just post more of other stuff, or wait it out a bit
Post more stuff you want to read. Simple as
I don’t mind reading CBC … it is more middle of the road concerning most topics and news headlines out there
Sure the corporation has changed compared to what it was 20 30 years ago but it is still fairly middle of the road.
I lean to the left, I’m an NDP supporter, workers rights, minority rights, LGBTQ+ supporter, women’s rights and even the rights of the right to express their views … and I find CBC to be more middle, maybe middle right for my taste
I have my own news feed I follow and CBC is among them all
Need to start posting Tyee and Maple articles!
Unfortunately, the CBC is kinda the only game in town for news media for a lot of Canada.
In Canada it’s basically PostMedia, the Thomson family, and CBC. I think the Toronto Star is under different ownership than the rest, but lately The Star has been indistinguishable from PostMedia. And out of those only PostMedia and CBC cover local news stories. PostMedia has cut back on staff so much and are trying to do the Rupert Murdoch thing (so aren’t trustworthy).
So that leaves us with the CBC. This is what the death of traditional media looks like I suppose. Only sources of news are either government funded or are grifters. And some like PostMedia are government funded grifters.
Not good to only have government funded media be the only source of news, but there really aren’t other viable options.
There are other sources besides the big mainstream ones, such as The Walrus, The Tyee, The Conversation, Rabble, Canadian Dimension, and others I’m probably forgetting.
Yes but how reliable are the other sources? Anyone can easily set up a website and put some articles.
The distrust of “mainstream media” is a paradox. You can’t trust a brand new website for reliable information, because it could just be a random person making shit up. But once a site has been around for a while and has built up a reputation, it gets labelled as “mainstream media” and therefore also shouldn’t be trusted.
Besides that, a news site has to be fairly large to be able to afford having journalists spending time investigating stories. But opinions are cheap, and that’s generally what the indie “news” sites are. Mostly just a collection of opinion columns with little to no stories resulting from investigative journalism. Sure mainstream media is doing a lot of opinion too, because its cheap and makes money, but at least there’s going to be some people at a larger organization doing actual journalism.
Not sure what you mean with “reliable.” Non-biased? The articles on, I think all the ones I mentioned, are written by journalists or academics.
And when I say Mainstream I just mean the more well known ones that everyone knows already.
What I mean is, I have no idea who these people are. An established news organization relies on it’s reputation. Losing that reputation costs them.
A brand new news organization has no reputation, and I have no idea who these people are. So I can’t rely on it.
And when I say Mainstream I just mean the more well known ones that everyone knows already.
This is my point. I don’t trust unknown sites on the internet. But if any of the sites you listed become known by everyone and establish a reputation they will then be considered mainstream. Which if we don’t trust mainstream media, we need to seek out more unknown sites which also shouldn’t trusted? Basically distrust of mainstream media winds up becoming “trust nobody ever” which doesn’t get us anywhere.
I never really understood why people can’t piece together the information that is presented to them instead of just taking things at face value. Is media literacy not taught at all in schools? You can read anything on the internet and use your rational mind (if you are educated so) to filter out the truths. If you can’t verify something just find other sources saying the same thing, at least then perhaps you can work off probabilities/likelihood.
I know many people read on like a 10th grade level, so I guess I see the importance of trust, as those people likely just read headlines and not the content, and definitely don’t analyse.
I never really understood why people can’t piece together the information that is presented to them instead of just taking things at face value. Is media literacy not taught at all in schools?
Time constraints are a major factor. I theoretically could read the same story from many different sources and do a comparative analysis on them to attempt to determine what the real story was. But then it would take more time to just find out about one story. And then I wouldn’t have time to read about other things are happening and I’m less informed.
And really I wouldn’t be getting anything more than if I just read or watched the CBC. If the CBC has a quote form Justin Trudeau, what are the other sources going to add to that? Their interpretation of what Trudeau meant by that remark? How certain parts of social media is responding to it?
If Justin Trudeau says something, or a person is charged with a crime, or a piece of legislation is passed, these are facts. Things that happened.
Generally mainstream media (bad actors like FoxNews and PostMedia excepted) covers these facts fairly well. AP News for world news, CBC for Canadian news and it’s basically all covered. The mainstream sources generally won’t report unconfirmed sources, so if I’m particularly interested in a story I may seek out other sources, knowing the sources will be more unreliable. Indy media is hungrier and will be willing to publish unconfirmed information, I know that when looking into it.
But for the most part this is time consuming. If the source you’re reading in indy media today does get confirmed, I’ll read about it in AP News or CBC tomorrow. But if it turns out to be a false rumour, you’ll see it, may not see the retraction the next day, while I’ll never seeing it at all.
I mean you are reading five different sources and tracking the sources you get your information from to make sure there isn’t a retraction later, right? And then checking back on all of those sources every day to ensure there was no retraction? That’s what you mean when you say “You can read anything on the internet and use your rational mind (if you are educated so) to filter out the truths.” Because if you aren’t doing all that, how do you know that something you’ve read might be false information? Critical thinking only works if you have the time to gather large amounts of data to apply it to.
For most of us, it’s more efficient to just get news from organizations that confirm their sources and do the due diligence for us. My critical thinking tells me that the CBC and AP News isn’t going to throw away the many decades of work to build their reputation just so they could misquote something Justin Trudeau says, which would be very easy for anyone to prove they did.
Good answer and I admire your thinking here. I can think of a few times some long held beliefs got debunked or the original studies or articles were retracted.
Journalism never been neutral.
What do you define to be “neutral”?
If Justin Trudeau says “XYZ” and the CBC has a story quoting him as saying “XYZ”, is that not neutral?
All media is government funded. The CBC is basically public broadcasting. The fact people want to portray it as a media empire that pushes left wing propaganda is absurd. If it doesn’t align with their viewpoint, it’s fake news. At this rate, if the people screaming had their way, they’d probably call Mr. Dressup and Mr. Rogers commies.
Heh, these days, people would call Richard Nixon a commie.
I think we just lack honesty in medias biases overall. CBC has a liberal biases , NP and Toronto Star has a neo Conservative biases . Having both is healthy . Having extremist calling for blood and conspiracy and sharing fake news is bad. Also , sharing columnists’ opinions is not sharing news and we have to acknowledge that. Those are just opinions . There is too much columnist and not enough facts reporting( there are , but we focuses on opinions about facts at 90%). AP news is probably the most fact neutral IMO.
Yeah, there should be “no editorials” rule. Our comments are the editorials.
Be the change you want to see in the world! I’ve been posting to some less busy subs as much as I can hoping to kickstart them. However if you want more NationalPost, Star, GlobeandMail then hit up those front pages and post the stories you think are interesting to Lemmy!
Exactly! Although asking a question like OP did is also a different post, and got some discussion going. So OP is already being the change they want to see.
I have mine set to New and I see ctv news the globe and mail cbc
Yeah, but still mostly news stories with no comments. I guess I should sort by newest comments.
Ain’t much else to talk about with how little people are actually here and sharing news is the best way to keep the sub going.
There is a surprising amount of lurkers based on the upvotes.
90% lurkers is fairly typical.
I’m guilty of this. What discussion exists is nice to see :)
From what I read Hot is bugged at the moment and should give better results with the 0.18 lemmy release. Newest Comments is good as you say and I find Top Day is a decent sorting option as well.
Lemmy is still young and not as active as reddit sub. It’ll get better as time goes on no?
This thread has shown that it already has!
It seems like one user (grte) essentially hits a couple news sites (primarily cbc) every morning and posts all the new stories to c/Canada.
I need to figure out how to block users…
e: Found it pretty easily in Jerboa
Might be a better idea to build in a delay timer instead.
Perhaps only 1 new post (not comment, but post) from an individual in a single sub every 5 minutes or so.
Also, it might be worth talking with @grte about the issue.
Is there an issue? I suggest you look at the raft of communities started during the reddit blackout that did not have users submitting content daily and look at how busy they are now. If you look at the community sorted to Top Day you will see that we’re starting to get a decent variety of sources now, so the original plan of watering the community with content until enough of a userbase was collected together that people started submitting a larger variety of things seems to be bearing fruit. People are scooping me on stories more and more which I think is great.
What I’d love to start popping up more actually is posts like this one. Not directly news related, but discussion based posts that really get the community to come out and talk about things. The kind of discussions that get people engaged and contributing.
I don’t have an issue (I was replying to the previous post), especially as I do see value in seeding a community with posts. An empty community is a dead community.
However, it may be of more benefit to spread them out. After all, this is all federated. So anyone following the community from elsewhere (my prior reply was from a Mastodon account), they will receive a big wall of posts from this community all at once, but if they were to log in later in the day, they would see nothing (as it all posted earlier).
It would also allow other people to post something themselves and start a conversation in the post, as opposed to just an unexamined link.
Some might also see it as an attempt at spamming or karma farming (even though that no longer translates). Perhaps those thoughts may be something to consider.
My objective has always been to back off as more members of the community step in to take part. By nature I’m much more of a reply guy, haha. But I feel some pull to create an alternative hub for Canadian discussion here. I definitely understand that my posts were like an info-dump, that’s a product of me doing it before I leave for work in the morning. We are starting to get a lot more submissions now so I will be a bit more discerning with my posts going forward.
I see you in my feed every day, and every time I think “huh, I’m glad someone is doing it”
Keep on keeping on. You’ve got my support anyway.
Good stuff. I love how it’s grown and look forward to seeing more voices discuss the issues that arise.
I’m working on growing [email protected] myself, and have tried to limit to 1 or 2 posts per day, just to keep them coming and leave openings for other locals to step in, but without the same kind of response.
Perhaps I’m the one that needs to take on a more aggressive seeding technique…
Well what I discovered was that the posts that would get interaction were not always obvious to me. There are definitely some where you can know for sure people will be interested, but many posts I was surprised by either how popular they were or how much the post whiffed. It takes all kinds to make the world go around, I suppose.
I also think that it’s just a matter of population. I do the same sort of thing with some smaller Canada-adjacent communities that I’m interested in, and while they get a decent amount of interaction in the form of upvoting and downvoting, they haven’t hit a critical mass of population to start generating much in the way of discussion. This community only just seems to be capable of sustaining a decent amount as of hitting 2k subscribers. My hope is that as this community grows interested people will filter into those more niche communities and the same process that is happening here, will happen there, albeit more slowly.
Yep. I figured that the problem wasn’t that you were posting too much, but that no one else was posting.
@grte is free to post what they want, and I’m not saying them posting a multitude of news stories is inherently a bad thing as it generates activity, it’s just not what I, or seemingly @MacroCyclo, want to fill our feeds with.
Perfect. The CBC is one of our best news sources if not the best.
Everyone has biases , and we tend to aggregate into communities. Neutral medias and communities doesn’t exist. There was always a information war everywhere. I think we should just have the least amount of bans possible for any media outlets being shared even if we disagree .
Actually it’s fairly straight forward to fact check and rank media on accuracy. The narrative that there is no real truth is just more misinformation.
