AP reporter tweets Raiders coach fired, except he wasn't

I read something not too long ago that said Facebook drove traffic way more than Twitter - like, three or four times more. I have no idea I that's still true.

 

Don't you just apply the same filters you would, though, in figuring out if you can trust any news story? Who is reporting it? Who is the source? And onward.

 

I've heard as much as 30 percent comes from Twitter in some places, though I don't know if that's the norm or what.

 

I don't because it'd be a waste of time in that I can't trust 90 percent of what I read there.

 

• The average adult’s attention span is 8 seconds, down 4 seconds from 2000. The average attention span of a goldfish: 9 seconds. (Statistic Brain)

• Adults spend about 14.5 hours a day across 7 media platforms (Statista)

• Millennials spend an average of 17.8 hours a day with different types of media and trust user-generated content 40 percent more than information from other media (Crowdtap)

• In 2012, media consumption in the U.S. averaged 63 gigabytes per person per day, or roughly 7 DVDs worth of data. (USC)

• The average American adult uses four different devices or technologies to get news. Nearly 7 in 10 of adults under 30 say they learned about news from social media in the past week. (API/AP)

• The average adult, by one conservative estimate, sees between 300 – 500 marketing messages a day (Telesian)

• Meanwhile, 74 percent of U.S. DVR users record shows so they can skip advertisements (Motorola)

https://medium.com/captivate-us/the-captivate-collection-e99d19fa8293

 

I thought it was because you already get your news via Google News? Otherwise, how can you trust the stories you read there? Most of the authors/media companies you read via Google News also post to their Twitter accounts.

 

The reason I get my news through Google News is I've found through experience that I can trust a good amount of it.

Are we really debating whether or not Twitter is a cesspool of misinformation when news breaks? I really thought that was a given. News websites peddle a lot of bullshit breaking news stuff too, but at least they have to put more than 140 words worth of thought into it.

 

I'm not debating that, no. I just find it weird that you're so dead-set against Twitter when A. You've never used it; and B. The same misinformation you can read on Twitter is probably in the stories you're reading on Google News.

The same Washington Post story, for example, is accessible via Google News and Twitter.

 

I use Twitter and Google News. The beauty of Google News is you can put in the subjects you're most interested in and the news sources you want that information to come from.

The problem with Google News is sometimes it posts links to garbage sites that shouldn't be given any credibility. I had this happen last weekend when I saw the "Peterson trade to Cowboys is inevitable" in my feed.

 

The re-Tweets, I think, are a major issue. For example, I would think I could trust Adam Schefter. Until the incident that touched off this thread. That never sees the light of day in a medium where he has to slow down and write more than 140 characters and run it by an editor.

Creosote has a valid point. The nature of Twitter is that garbage gets through sometimes, despite one's best efforts. And he doesn't want to spend time on garbage.

 

I keep up with news throughout the day - that's what I use my second monitor for at work.

That said, there's still nothing like the good old newspaper. (Tablet version for me.)

I still read it every morning because it's kind of the final word on news that occurred the day before. At some point, those stories breaking on Twitter or Facebook or here in bits and pieces get verified and assembled and, voila, the newspaper.

 

That's a good point about the retweets. One I hadn't thought about. Adds an extra layer of potential BS.

I think Creosote has a valid point, too. I'm not trying to say Twitter is filled with credible information. Just that you can filter that information (for the most part) so that you minimize the potential BS and follow only those sources you trust.

But I also don't think Twitter is nearly as bad (with misinformation) as some make it sound. It's a place for news, sure, but it's so much more than that.