this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2025
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Mildly Interesting

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This is for strictly mildly interesting material. If it's too interesting, it doesn't belong. If it's not interesting, it doesn't belong.

This is obviously an objective criteria, so the mods are always right. Or maybe mildly right? Ahh.. what do we know?

Just post some stuff and don't spam.

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[–] 9point6@lemmy.world 252 points 6 days ago (1 children)

"Mildly interesting" is not very close to my reaction to this at all, rather something closer to "particularly concerning"

[–] reddig33@lemmy.world 92 points 6 days ago (3 children)

It’s not like newspapers or television are much better. The oligarchs bought and control both of those outlets. Plenty of “opinion disguised as news” to go around these days.

[–] DwZ@lemmy.world 53 points 6 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (3 children)

It’s not like newspapers or television are much better. The oligarchs bought and control both of those outlets

You have plenty of non-profit newspapers. ProPublica. The Guardian. The Colorado Sun. Mississippi Today. The Salt Lake Tribune. Mother Jones. The Walrus. Le Devoir. La Presse. Mediapart.

Also, if a journalist writes bullshit, they lose their job. It's career suicide.

The way to assess the credibility of a journalist is easy. Just look at their past articles. Their articles usually follow them for their entire career.

If someone on social media spreads bullshit, what happens ? Nothing.

[–] Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 43 points 6 days ago

If someone on social media spreads total bullshit, what happens ? Nothing.

Thats not true. They become president.

You have plenty of non-profit newspapers. ProPublica. The Guardian. The Colorado Sun. The Salt Lake Tribune. Mother Jones. Le Devoir. La Presse. Mediapart

And how much of the market do these networks control? Just because there are non profits available doesn't negate their claim.

Also, if a journalist writes total bullshit, they lose their job. It's career suicide. Their articles follow them for their entire career. So they have to be careful.

Depending on what network they are submitting their work to.... It's not like "journalists" on Fox News are being shamed for submitting fake stories.

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[–] reddig33@lemmy.world 108 points 6 days ago (3 children)

Before online influencers, it was AM radio.

[–] protist@mander.xyz 53 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

Which only reached middle aged and older men who drove a lot

Edit: I don't get the downvotes. In AM radio's heyday, pre-2000, women and younger people were not listening to it at all. Older men were the target demographic. Of course everyone had access to radios, but women and younger people were listening to FM, not Rush Limbaugh. And at home, AM was never on unless you were in a very rural area and an AM station was your only choice.

[–] Xhead@lemmings.world 21 points 6 days ago (7 children)

You know some people really show their age when they talk about the past..

Their were just as many radios as we have TVs now back in the day

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[–] DarkFuture@lemmy.world 36 points 5 days ago (6 children)

Lying is easy and takes less time. Real news requires going places, interviewing people, fact checking, and presenting it in a professional manner.

It's no wonder the right wing media ecosystem is bigger.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 15 points 5 days ago

Lying is easy and takes less time.

A lot of these shows go hand-in-glove with traditional media. The police-blotter style coverage of local news, wherein a handful of old white people bemoan the latest string of young black man violent crimes gets picked up and fed into the Podcast Racism Engine and spat out as the show's Two-Minute Hate of the day.

Then you have a congo-line of ex-military blowhards telling you how they got rich trading in their service pensions for crypto futures. You have the usual suspects lineup of incel sex pests complaining that America's Newest Supermodel isn't hot enough or isn't Trad Enough, in between reading sponsor copy for whatever PR company paid them to say said Supermodel's name twenty times in a given episode. You have interviews with C-list politicians who come on the show to cry about how you can't say the N-word anymore, on account of the Woke. You have middling athletes at the end of their careers complain about how Transgender high schoolers are ruining the sport. You have middling songwriters at the end of their careers complain about how they pay too much in taxes and hate all three of their ex-wives. You have middling screenwriters demo a pilot episode of a cartoon series about Real Americans forced to use pronouns at gunpoint, then point you to the conservative version of Kickstarter with the promise of a full series that'll never get produced once they have your money. And holy shit will you get an earful about Jesus.

All this takes a bunch of time and networking and tons of money to grease the wheels. Charlie Kirk ain't doing this shit for free. But it's stacked up like any classic MLM, with the kingpins racking in disproportionately more than any of their minions or guests.

It's short-sighted to say these operations are just faster than traditional journalism, though. Lots of the names on that board have been bouncing around for decades. This is a long term, heavily financed, hugely lucrative propaganda machine. It dates back to the Nixon Era (arguably earlier) and quite a few folks have gone to their graves helping to build it.

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[–] surph_ninja@lemmy.world 23 points 5 days ago

Most of the ones labeled “left” here are pushing center right talking points at best.

The actual leftist online sources, like African Stream, are straight up banned from the platforms. The right wing sources dominate because they don’t challenge corporate interests, and are not subject to censorship.

[–] Karyoplasma@discuss.tchncs.de 71 points 6 days ago (12 children)

Social media was a mistake.

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[–] rozodru@lemmy.world 37 points 5 days ago (13 children)

Asmongold...you have got to be shitting me. imagine getting your "news" from a guy that used a dead rat as an alarm clock, wipes the blood from his gums on his bedroom wall, used to routinely eat snacks that had maggots in them, and treats drinking water like it's poison.

A guy who could barely play WoW and left his main account on twitch because making money from viewers on that was "too stressful" proceeds to start an alt channel where he nows grifts the right for money.

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[–] finitebanjo@piefed.world 47 points 5 days ago (5 children)

Feels weird to include Noah and Carlson but not include Jon Stuart, Stephen Colbert, or John Oliver.

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[–] bigboismith@lemmy.world 41 points 5 days ago (1 children)

ThE LeFt cOntRols The nArAtiVe

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[–] KingGimpicus@sh.itjust.works 19 points 5 days ago (3 children)

TYT is left? Excuse the fuck out of me? Lmfao last I heard TYT was russia funded

[–] nova_ad_vitum@lemmy.ca 9 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I haven't even heard of TYT in years. Somehow they still have 12m viewers? Do people listen to them to fall asleep or something lol

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[–] Alph4d0g@discuss.tchncs.de 33 points 6 days ago

Would be interesting to see a funding source overlay on this

[–] NatakuNox@lemmy.world 20 points 5 days ago (4 children)

The young turks turned far right over night once Harris lost.

[–] HiddenLychee@lemmy.world 14 points 5 days ago (2 children)

Last I saw them was them saying the left needs to start treating trans people shittier because my"most Americans are transphobic" and if we ever want to win an election again, we have to be transphobic.

As a trans person myself dating another trans person, where are we supposed to go?

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[–] pedz@lemmy.ca 16 points 5 days ago (9 children)

Seeing TYT "left-leaning" saddens me. If they were left-leaning, they are not anymore.

[–] kadaverin0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 5 days ago

I actually have to thank TYT for turning me to the left. If it wasn't for their constant retreat into smug milquetoast centrism when presented with "radical" solutions to help the poor and oppressed their rich asses pantomimed giving a shit about, I never would have realized I was an anarchist.

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[–] WhatThaFudge@lemmy.world 25 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Is this graph supposed to be useful in any way? It excludes a huge number of voices from the left and also have a bunch of circles without names and just some random 1.1m or 2m NR on them but without any indication of who they represent more than their color.

[–] OddMinus1@sh.itjust.works 19 points 5 days ago (3 children)

I don't understand why bubbles with seemingly random positions was chosen to represent this data.

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[–] Triasha@lemmy.world 13 points 5 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (2 children)

This is me. I get my news from Lemmy, a dude in New Z̶e̶e̶l̶a̶n̶d̶ Zealand , and a gardener in Oregon.

Sometimes a lady in Florida that owns a shed.

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[–] Ileftreddit@lemmy.world 9 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Yeah turns out the morons stopped reading newspapers and by the time the one who still read the news realized it, the online sphere was “alt right” I can’t even make ironic comments anymore because everyone reads at a 5th grade level; and if I’m sarcastic I get banned by a mod that doesn’t receive it well. And now we all have to compete with AI online, it’s time to crush all our phones and resort to local fucking activism with like one HAM radio operator per cell

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[–] TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world 25 points 5 days ago (1 children)

They get funding, that much is obvious. It was the same story with the Nazis who got massive support from obvious sources.

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[–] rustydrd@sh.itjust.works 20 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (8 children)

Not sure I trust the methodology here. I would've expected shows like The Ezra Klein Show or Pod Save America to be fairly big on the left here (and on the Apple Podcast charts, TEKS is ahead in rank of some that are listed here, PSA not far behind).

The description of the methodology is not very clear. For example, it's unclear what they consider a "show", what their search strategy was to arrive at their initial list of shows, and how the raters determined whether a show was leaning left or right (i.e., some of this is described but not in a way that would make it reproducible, and there seems to be some gut feel involved). The exclusion of shows produced by TV stations makes sense but excludes more left- than rightwing sources.

I don't doubt that right-wing shows have the upper hand in the non-traditional media market and agree this is a problem, but this project may be exaggerating the difference a bit.

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[–] Endymion_Mallorn@kbin.melroy.org 27 points 6 days ago (9 children)

I find it interesting - and a little concerning - that there are so many more right-leaning voices than left. I have to ask a simple question - why has the left not produced more strident voices and more people able to make popular content?

[–] reddig33@lemmy.world 57 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (4 children)

The left doesn’t need their opinions constantly validated by personalities. The left enjoys (and understands) satire more. Voices like Colbert, and Jon Stewart, and John Oliver.

[–] Artisian@lemmy.world 18 points 6 days ago (3 children)

Are my eyes failing me, or are they not in the chart?

Having a hard time pre-deciding who and what content I think should appear in such a chart. Vlog brothers? e-newspapers?

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[–] limer@lemmy.ml 36 points 6 days ago

I am guessing here, but right wing shows seem to have more finances. They are run by wealthy people, playing power games, who have sociopathic motivations.

Left wing shows are more run on a minimal budget, more for selfless reasons, by people who have a day job too.

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[–] NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone 25 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Reagan was President when I was a kid. America is right-wing as Hell and always has been.

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[–] blarth@thelemmy.club 12 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (2 children)

I will never understand how anyone can listen to Theo Von or Lex Fridman without losing thousands of brain cells per second.

[–] SecretSauces@lemmy.world 9 points 5 days ago

They can't. Which explains the whole manosphere train of thought

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[–] unconsequential@slrpnk.net 23 points 6 days ago (7 children)

To those asking about the imbalance— it’s money. Just like older forms of media (print, radio, tv) there’s much deeper pockets for right-wing “funding” than on the left. And many left leaning outlets/personalities will turn down cash flows that might limit their control over their content. Follow the money. Always.

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[–] BigTrout75@lemmy.world 17 points 5 days ago

So many masterdebaters

[–] carlossurf@lemmy.ca 9 points 5 days ago

The right has more bots

[–] TootSweet@lemmy.world 20 points 6 days ago (4 children)

Wow. How are Colbert and John Oliver not on that graphic? Meanwhile, I don't think I've ever watched more than three or four YouTube clips of Trevor Noah.

Oh god, am I old?

Also, it sucks that Brand's a right-winger. There was a time when I thought his heart was somewhat in the right place even if the execution was... questionable.

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[–] jsomae@lemmy.ml 9 points 5 days ago (2 children)

Since there's no colour legend, I was really confused by this since blue means conservative and red means liberal in Canada.

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[–] kadaverin0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 5 days ago

I cannot imagine a sane moment in my life were I'd be completely OK listening to Russell Brand's dog shit commentary for over an hour.

[–] HugeNerd@lemmy.ca 11 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

Hm, "newspaper" vs "online influencers". Can't newspapers be called "offline influencers"? This is how propaganda works, folks. Or are newspapers all online now too?

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[–] carl_dungeon@lemmy.world 16 points 6 days ago (9 children)

Lotta fucking idiots on that chart.

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[–] cute_noker 9 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Steven Crowder is a one trick pony

Change my mind

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[–] Ilovethebomb@sh.itjust.works 16 points 6 days ago (9 children)

The left has a communication problem, all around the world. Right/conservative types seem very good at breaking their ideas down to very simple messages, and progressive types just don't seem to be able to communicate in that way.

[–] kinsnik@lemmy.world 37 points 6 days ago

Well, that is easier to do when their news dont need to follow reality, and their solutions don't need to work or make sense

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[–] VerseAndVermin@lemmy.world 14 points 6 days ago (1 children)

It is important to mind the small text, showing where the data came from. Subscribers and followers on YouTube, Spotify, Rumble, Twitch, Kick, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.

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