I just deactivated my facebook account for reasons. Where should I go for news and interesting stuff

In My Humble Opinion
21

For today’s updates you click the new posts link in the menu bar. That has worked for decades. Why should we change it now?

22

I had read they were refusing to do so–did they change their mind?

There’s a difference, though, between fake news sites, news “conduits” which basically rewrite news articles with an obligatory link, and actual news sites. Fake news sites are always bad. News conduits vary widely in quality, but there’s never a good reason not to follow the links through to get to the original story, so they can be useful in that way. Real news sites vary narrowly in quality. :wink:

23

I like my personalized Google news page.

I haven’t deactivated my FB account but I don’t think I’ve been there a dozen times in the past year. Too much drama!

24

Reuters
NewserMSNBC
News Radio880
(I also like the APP…)

Create a an account, read world news and news, but ignore the rest, Especially The Comments.
Racist As Fuck isn’t the Half of it…

25

Roll your own.

I use calibre’s ebook manager ability to download and format RSS feeds as ebooks. Many feeds I’ve modified their python “recipes” to exclude things I’m not interested in (like the foreign feeds where I generally exclude things like sports and lower than national level sections. Some I’ve added myself from RSS feeds on sites I like. Whether you go the calibre route or a dedicated RSS feed aggregator there’s a lot to be said for the approach of casting a wide net from good sources on things you want to stay informed about.

What’s queued up in my rss downloads at least once a week (as opposed to the even longer list that includes some sites on a 1-2 times a month schedule):
ABC (Australia)
Al-Jazeera
Balkan Insight
BBC
CBC
DOD News Feed
Factcheck
India Today
IOL News (South Africa)
Irish Independent
NATO Latest news
New Scientist
Science Today
Small Wars Journal blogs rss feed (their blog feed is mostly an aggregator for foreign policy and military from other news sites.)
Spiegel Online International (Germany)
The Atlantic
The Economist
The Irish Times
The Japan Time
The Philippine Star
The Washington Post
Voice of America

Reuters, Washington Post, BBC and Small Wars Journal are downloaded most frequently and tend to be the first checked. I don’t read all, or even most, of the rest despite most of them only being downloaded once a week on dispersed days. The formatting allows me to see the story headlines in the metadata shown for the book without opening it. That helps me focus on what interests me.

26

I downloaded an add-on for Facebook that allowed me to hide the News and Trending and lots of other crap. I also deactivated my Facebook last week for reasons.
Fark is my go to, as is Consumerist, the formerly Gawker sites Jezebel, Jalopnik, Gizmodo, Deadspin and Lifehacker. For in-depth I go to the Christian Science Monitor (which is wholly non-religious, believe it or not) and Voice of America.

Avoid the UK papers Daily Mail and Mirror and Sun.

Having lived in a few far-flung states I also like to check on my hometowns by going to the Detroit News/Free Press, the Charleston Post and Courier and the local rag here, the Salt Lake Tribune (owned by Mormons but NOT by the Mormon Church just yet).

27

You’re already there.

28

I guess it’s alright to post links here, so here’s the WSJ link below.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-bans-fake-news-sites-from-using-its-advertising-network-1479175778

29

Try the guardian, and click the world tab. There are countries you’ve never even heard of (nor has the anchor on the 6 oclock news)… A whole new universe of news is happening in them…

30

I use the headlines bookmark in Firefox. (I don’t know if it’s there by default anymore.) It uses the BBC. I like it because it’s not-for-profit and looks at the US from a relatively unbiased perspective.

We need something like the BBC for America.\

I still have Facebook, but I used my adblocker to hide the newsfeed. Granted, I would have preferred just to shut off the political part, but there didn’t seem to be an easy way to do that.

I am not getting my news from sources that are deliberately biased towards me anymore. And I don’t really want to hear every little thing Trump does for a while.

31

There’s a Firefox extension called FB Purity that will change your Facebook experience in exactly the ways you’re looking for.

32

Really? I looked at that, but didn’t see them mention that particular option. If I can just filter out the Political tab from the news, or at least have it automatically start on a different filter, that would be great!

33

You can pick who to have in your News Feed, make a filter for whatever words you want, that sort of thing. Once you’ve installed it it takes a few minutes to set up what you want to hide or show but then it’s smooth sailing. It can always be removed if it doesn’t suit you.

34

Gotcha. I guess it wouldn’t hurt to try. I just remember it being a pain to disable all the “helpful” stuff it turns on by default, and didn’t want to bother if it wouldn’t help.

When I say newsfeed, BTW, I mean that thing up in the right hand side that has actual news in it, not my wall. I don’t want the politics tab, nor do I want it mixed with the all tab.

35

I hid everything you see on the right side and turned off Chat; my page is bare bones, not much more than Pages and Friends in my feed; I get my news deliberately elsewhere.
But, I’m terribly cynical and have enjoyed a week free from Facebook and its attendant drama. Might well be permanent.

36

FARK is still a thing?!?!?!

37

I love Fark. Once you get a feel for the in jokes and stuff, it’s a lot of fun. The live post along threads for debates and elections move fast and get a ton of participation.

38

Agreed; I love the built-in bullshit detectors, even just in the comments. Plenty of reality checking.