I got a lot of my headlines from reddit. Due to the impending death of my favorite app (Sync for Reddit) however, that’s coming to an end.

I’m now realising my Reddit experience had deteriorated slowly, just doomscrolling the hours away wasn’t healthy and I’m even kind of glad this is a good reason to end it. However, reddit has been really useful for news, especially the comments (taken with the right amount of skepticism) could be very informative.

I hope Lemmy builds something similar, but the defederation of beehaw’s news has been a setback.

What would be a good alternative, going forward, for getting news and backgrounds from varied, trustworthy en unbiased sources?

    • SoullionessEnglish
      3•2 years ago

      As someone that’s never used RSS, how does it work?

      • @[email protected]English
        7•2 years ago

        You install an RSS reader app on your phone or computer and subscribe to the feed links. Those contain some metadata for each story and a link to the content. The RSS reader will display everything in a readable way.

        • @_finger_English
          3•2 years ago

          Is there an RSS reader with built in comment sections?

          • @[email protected]English
            1•2 years ago

            No, that’s kind of antithetical to how rss works.

            The RSS protocol is basically just a list of links. So each content producer publishes their own list, to which people subscribe. Comments stay in their respective communities.

            For example, you could have an rss feed from a reddit sub, and another from a lemmy community, and another from a newspaper.

            Of course you could build an app with its own comment section, but as I said that would kind of undermine the elegance of RSS.

    • @OFS_RazgrizEnglish
      1•2 years ago

      Both of them have truly neutral coverage, as in they report based on fact and reality and don’t limit what they write in order to maintain some false sense of neutrality. Many news sites nowadays play down objective fact in order to maintain “neutrality” between one side of the political spectrum that believes in evidence and statistical fact and one that expressly does not.

      This of course means that they’re seen as being “anti-Trump” or “anti-Republican” but in actuality it’s reality itself that is anti-Trump and they just report reality.

      • OrangeSliceMEnglish
        4•2 years ago

        I would caution against putting so much faith in them both so strongly. They both favor American establishment liberal politics, which is transparent to many due to the fact that a lot of Americans agree with those politics, and that they appear very reasonable in comparison to whatever tf Republicans are up to on a given day.

        It’s not a bad thing that they tend to have a very dry and straightforward tone, but all outlets are biased, and it’s important to remain critical at all times if you want to have an accurate picture of a current event.

        • @OFS_RazgrizEnglish
          3•2 years ago

          Oh fully agree, of course. Every once in a while I see a neoliberal dipshit in their opinion columns making some abhorrent take, but generally they’re significantly better than WaPo, NYT, CNN, Fox, CNBC, NBC, or CBS.

          Some other good ones are Reuters, Al Jazeera, and the Associated Press, which of course each come with their own set of biases as well. Reuters is also fairly establishment liberal, Al Jazeera is useless for any news about the Middle East, and AP’s opinion and analysis columns lean pretty conservative.

          My comment was more in the sense that a “neutral” news site is one where they do not suppress facts because those facts favor a perceived “side” of a debate, which is becoming increasingly common as major political parties in the US and abroad start pushing outright falsehoods in their rhetoric.

          • OrangeSliceMEnglish
            2•2 years ago

            Fair enough, that’s actually close to the mix I have in my RSS reader, although I also would add the SCMP and teleSur as well

            • @OFS_RazgrizEnglish
              1•2 years ago

              I’ll take a look at those! I should really consider setting up an RSS feed for news coverage. Kinda been meaning to for a while, do you have an RSS reader that you prefer?

              • OrangeSliceMEnglish
                2•2 years ago

                Liferea works well for me, but if you aren’t using Linux then we can all long for Google Reader to come back lol. https://miniflux.app/ also looks good but takes some setting up it looks like.

                Also be aware in advance that teleSur is Cuban/Venezuelan/Bolivian state media, but it sounds like you have decent enough media criticism skills to appreciate their point of view in comparison to the US-based outlets.

                • @OFS_RazgrizEnglish
                  1•2 years ago

                  Thanks for the recommendations and info! That’s another thing on my to-do list, I’m planning on making my main PC do dual-boot with Windows 10 and Linux and once Windows 11 gets forced I’m done with Microsoft (but that’s a whole other conversation lmao).

      • @[email protected]English
        1•2 years ago

        If you want as close as possible to true “neutrality” – which is to mean verifiable fact-only reporting without commentary, you’re going to need to go to the wire services directly – the AP and Reuters are the largest.