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.
I think you are getting it wrong. I added a small edit for context. It is more about emotional distraction. I kinda feel like him: I want to remain informed, but please let me prepare a bit before telling me about civilians cut in pieces in a conflict between a funny cat video and a machine learning news.
For the same reason we filter out porn or gore images from our feeds, highly emotional news should be filterable
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with taking a break from social media or news. There are days I don’t visit sites like Lemmy or when I do I only click non-news links because I’m not in the mood or already having a bad day. That’s different than filtering (as per Karpathy’s example) Tweets so that when you do engage it’s consistently a very curated, inoffensive, “safe” experience. Again, I only have the one post to go off of, but he specifically talks about wishing to avoid Tweets that “elicit emotions” or “nudge views” and compares those provocative messages to malware. As far as your point regarding blatantly sensationalist news, when I recognize it’s that kind of story I just stop reading/watching and that’s that.
I WANT to have my emotions elicited because I seek to be educated and don’t want to be complacent about things that should make me react. “Don’t know, don’t care” is how people go unrepresented or abused - e.g. almost no one reads about what Boko Haram is doing in Nigeria (thus it’s already “filtered out” by media), and so very little has been done in the 22 years they’ve been affecting millions of lives. I WANT to have my “views nudged” because I’m regularly checking my worldview to make sure it stays centered around my core ethics, and being challenged has prompted me to change bad stances before. Being exposed to objectionable content before and reassessing is also how I’ve learned to spot BS attempts to manipulate. It doesn’t matter how many times MAGA Tweets tell me that God is upset at drag queens and only Donald Trump can save the world because now I recognize ragebait when I see it. Having dealt with it before, no amount of exposure is going to make me believe their trash and knowing what is being said is useful for exposing and opposing harmful governmental policies/bad candidates (sometimes even helping deprogram others).
I’m putting this in it’s own response because it’s a less important addendum to my main points above and I don’t want to put everyone off with a single huge brick of text.
If just knowing bad news exists makes life difficult for someone, even if they don’t click the link, then I’d (respectfully, not as an insult) recommend learning coping techniques like meditation, diaphragmatic breathing, or cognitive behavior therapy that can add resilience. I am NOT suggesting someone feeling like that is innately weak or flawed, but there are techniques to move the impact of knowing there’s bad things happening towards manageable. If it’s still immediately extremely distressing, there may be related past trauma that needs sorting out.
Physical analogy for social media breaks - I work out regularly. Even though it’s a healthy habit, I don’t work out every day because it’s tiring and that would make it unhealthy. When I do work out though I want it to be difficult because that’s how gains are made. So I’m not saying you or I need to batter ourselves with torturous news every day - breaks aren’t just ok they’re how you stay healthy. When I read the news though, I want the whole truth even if that truth has parts that are uncomfortable or challenge my worldview, and I also want to be experienced/trained enough to handle those emotions and thoughts.
That’s the point.
The information that’s upsetting has leaked around the existing mechanisms for preventing it from ending up in your view.
You’re supposed to be angry, not wish there was a better way to keep from seeing it.
I swear to god we got motherfuckers here who took the wrong message from the damn matrix.