News

(1) Thank you but that still wouldn't explain why the person I replied to decided to put all that here, in such an unasked-for manner (and with people downvoting so much to boot, not sure why). Perhaps this is part of some campaign to help avoid clickbait? If so that's awesome, though I'm not sure how necessary since it's an extremely well-known news source. I don't see any pinned posts on this community that explains either. I upvoted and tried to provide constructive feedback. Sorry that I am OOTL.

(2) A quick glance at that site does not fill me with confidence - in fact it does fill me with the precise opposite of that.

First, there are TONS of ads, including an ENORMOUS full-screen (MODAL!!!!!!!!!) one that shows up even on Firefox with uBlock Origin. I am not saying that they do not deserve or even need funding to keep going but... it certainly looks like they want their money. And also they want other people's money. And also they want more money, and also moar mooonay. And if I continue to scroll, they probably will want even moar money? At which point, who am I to trust? The Guardian that I have read for years, or if I swat away enough of the ads, which again PERSIST EVEN THROUGH AN AD BLOCKER (sorry, that upsets me), or this comment, that again shows up un-announced, un-explained, and has what I considered to be questionable content? (tbf, it's not that I'm adversarial against it, but it is unknown to me, as explained)

Also that full-screen modal box jumps and skips and hops around in a cutesy manner. Literally 100% of that site (at first glance anyway) looks completely antithetical to every journalistic ethical standard that I have ever heard of - just like every other modern "news" site today, unfortunately:-(.

Let's see... as I scroll down I am CONSTANTLY reminded of how I can "Gift", or "Donate" to the site... okay, good to know... finally it starts to tell me what I have known for decades already - that The Guardian is Left-Center, m'okay...

To top it all off, at the very bottom you can rate The Guardian yourself. OMG, are you freaking kidding me - this result is based off of a POLL!?!?! Of people that get tricked into visiting this ad-filled, clickbait website!?!?

To their credit, they do list out every single article that fails the fact-check. That... tbh is quite nice, credit where it is due for sure! Or at least it looks that way, but like everything in relation to this site, one mere second of digging is enough to dispell that notion. e.g. "Private renting is making millions of people ill. – False". My initial thought: obviously private renting can make people ill, but I dunno about millions... fortunately you can click to read more, which says:

Our verdict: A survey found almost a quarter of private renters agree that housing worries have made them ill in the past year. This doesn’t mean the sickness was specifically caused by renting privately as opposed to any other type of housing situation.

This ignores many, Many, MANY things, e.g. the very title of that article was "Private renting making millions sick in England, poll shows" - the "poll shows" was right there, in the very title itself!? Also, the article gave numerous examples of precisely how people were getting scammed by their landlords:

“The worst bit was when I was trying to get them to fix my kitchen,” she said. “Cupboard doors would come off in my hands when I was trying to open them. I’d ask [the landlord] to have a look at it and they’d just say ‘It’s fine, it’s still functional’. How can you expect people to live like that?”

It sounds like if this woman ("Claire, 41, a renter in Poole, Dorset") felt that she had lack of agency in being able to fix the problems that plagued her. She wanted it to be fixed - as opposed to someone who has intentionally chosen to live in squalor and filth - and she even tried to get it to be so, but b/c she did not own the property the usual means to do that were denied to her. And then that anxiety over her lack of agency made her feel physically ill - in addition to cleanliness etc. “It is the rule rather than the exception [for tenants she represents] to be experiencing illness: most commonly anxiety, depression, and respiratory conditions.”

The tagline immediately under the title even says: "Survey reveals sky-high prices and poor living conditions causing stress and anxiety".

Only someone who has never rented nor even so much as ever talked to someone who rented in their entire life could think that this story is FALSE!? Sorry but I think I am too emotional over this to discuss this rationally today.

TLDR: who will police the police? This clickbaity website tries to suggest that The Guardian offers clickbaits sometimes, while itself offering clickbaits far more often. I originally upvoted the top-level comment we are replying to, but I have since changed it to a downvote, based on my admittedly brief assessment of that site. If someone wants to explain why it is trust-worthy then I will listen, but from everything that I am seeing with my very own eyes, I am filled with the opposite of confidence in it, and would prefer to have seen a more reputable source. For all I know, the person who offered it owns that site, and is making money off of people clicking it to read the advertisements? Though I would guess more likely they offered it in friendliness, by stripping away the advertisements in order to bring solely the relevant info here to the Fediverse - and yet by not offering any kind of explanation of it whatsoever, my original point stands: we do not know how to interpret this info, and everything that I see as I continue to dig takes more and more trust away from it.