Stop Showing Washington Post in Google News Feed

1. I haven't used Google news until today, but I believe that's what the "Headlines" tab at the bottom bar is for. It seems to just show you the major headlines from everywhere, no personalization or AI involved. 2. Every news story has a "Full Coverage" button on the bottom-right that pulls up that same story from a variety of stories, so you can get different perspectives. I agree that injecting AI and personalization into news is an easy way to put yourself in a bubble, but it seems that Google has at least tried to give users the tools to minimize that.

Personalisation isn't inherently bad. For example, I have zero interests in sports, and I don't think I'm putting myself in a "bubble" for not wanting any sport related articles in my feed. I also may have niche interests, such as puzzle games, which a generic feed would never surface. Where AI gets dangerous is focusing on either a single source, or providing one side of the story, but that's exactly what "Full coverage" attempts to solve as you mention.

> see semi-random headlines from a variety of source to increase my exposure to stories I might not have seen otherwise Isn't that exactly personalized news? But you can just load it on incognito or signed out and not have any personalization other than location/country.

Personalization does not arise from passive use. Consider the converse, articles from a list of user selected sources. That sounds more like personalized news. Besides Google News used to function that way so I think I should be entitled to my opinion of how it should function.

Oh, just found out that Google News has what you're looking for: go to headlines section. I opened the app and found it weird that there were news about Taylor Swift, the British royal wedding and a lot of other topics that I'm not interested in. Then I noticed I was in the "headlines" section, and not the "for you" section. I'm glad they split both up.

It's quite useful! These days I browse pretty much all news sites in Incognito mode, due to paywalls.

They address this: some stuff are personalized, but not everything. "content in Full Coverage is the same for everyone—it's an unpersonalized view of events from a range of trusted news sources."

I like(d) the raw news feeds from AP etc. I say liked because they all seem to be disappearing. Just give me a long list of the incoming headlines, I'll filter by scanning, thanks.

I am hesitant about raw news, I think context is at a minimum important. I would much rather read an article published 12-36 hours after the fact that is rich with context and detail. I have blocked CNN from my feeds for this reason, they place a high value on immediacy and I think this heavily degrades their content.

> I don't want personalized news, I use Google News for the exact opposite reason. That's what I used to use google news for too. Then a few years ago, google "personalized" and "localize"d news to your area and it became pointless. Google news was especially great for international events in the early 2010s because you'd get international sources listed back then. So you could see the difference in coverage between our media and china's media and europe's media and middle east's media of the same event. Now, google news is just mostly NYTimes and Washingtonpost stories. And considering they espouse the same message on pretty much everything, I stopped using google news. I understand that google was heavily pressured by the news industry to push traffic to major US news sites, but I wish they would have given us the option to opt out of personalization and localization. What's even more disappointing is that google search was updated to heavily favor local news. So if I search for "North korea news" or "syria news", the search result is ridiculously skewed to US news' perspective. They used to list forums, messageboards, etc on search for international events, but they scrubbed those from the search results. Social media used to have alternate/external/foreign sources but after US media pressure, they've also "personalized" and localized. It's amazing how easily the news industry has pressured tech companies into limiting what the public sees and hears. I wish there was a news aggregate site which had a page per news event where it listed international coverage of the event.

> Now, google news is just mostly NYTimes and Washingtonpost stories. What? This is certainly not my experience. I just went to news.google.com in my desktop browser, and I clicked on the World section. On the Iran sanctions/deal story, there are several sources grouped together in one card. The top source is indeed Washington post but the same card also contains coverage from Mehr News Agency (which it highlights as "From Iran"), Reuters, The Hill, RollingStone.com, NYT (highlighted as "Opinion"), NEWS.com.au, and Associated Press. If I click on "View full coverage", I get more sources, of course.

This was not my experience, my feed has been flooded by NYT and WSP stories. This normally wouldn't be a problem but these stories are often different takes on current events and the algorithm is bad serving related articles for these stories. The result is a feed full meta analysis about the news without the actual news.

> meta analysis about the news aka "opinion" aka "blogging" aka "less expensive and more eye-catching than finding and reporting facts"

> What? This is certainly not my experience. Your comment describes the experience to the tee. > The top source is indeed Washington post but the same card also contains coverage from Mehr News Agency (which it highlights as "From Iran"), Where are you from? In the NY area, all I see is US related. A couple of washingtonpost, a couple of nytimes, rolling stone, cnn, etc. Even in the expanded "view full coverage", I don't see mehr news. > Reuters, The Hill, RollingStone.com, NYT (highlighted as "Opinion"), NEWS.com.au, and Associated Press. So, no diversity? They all are essential one news agency masquerading as different news. Yes, even the australian source. How about this, I wish I had better access to different echo chambers. Reuters, The Hill, RollingStone.com, NYT (highlighted as "Opinion"), NEWS.com.au, and Associated Press along with the nytimes and washingtonpost are part of the same echo chamber. They all push the same message. I want to see what the other nations/regions are saying. I want different opinions/perspectives/news.

When even Reuters and Associated Press gets branded as echo chambers, a lot of people have ostensibly let fully go of objective reality.

> Google news was especially great for international events in the early 2010s because you'd get international sources listed back then I still get international sources (sometimes as the first source on a story , as on the Iran deal right now) on both the Google News & Weather app and the Google News desktop page. Strangely, the new Google News mobile page doesn't as much (and doesn't seem to expand to provide multiple sources for the same story the way it used and the other interfaces still do), and there's little consistency in sources, or even stories selected, between the three interfaces.

This is exactly how I feel but I am located in the UK and sources can be really biased on how and what they report. I usually end up consulting several foreign news outlet including what our national media would qualify as not so reputable.

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Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17025267