If one honestly and genuinely believe Chinese people can get their news only from the CCP, one needs to consider fighting to gain his/her own information independence.
And I forgot very important gamingtech, and IoTtech ;-)
What I am getting at is that there is a paradigm shift in privacy consideration and expectations in the last two decades (on top of another shift the previous 2 or 3 decades).
We are living in a different age. The combat I read about in HN comments seems that of a rearguard... no offense.
I have (mild) worries about privacy from all over the tech spectrum in our day and age, and I can understand people having these worries about big tech such as Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, Mastercard, Walmart, but the list must spread all over the space of tech, devtech, socialtech, fintech, edutech, insurancetech, govtech, medtech, citytech, and whathaveyoutech.
The problem is not constrained to Google Chrome, and the problem is certainly not solved by "taking side" in a made-up rivalry of Google Search and Duck Duck Go (childish to say the least)!
That's exactly why I think it could have saved us from the one-eyed worldview of media powers. Just weed through the forest and work your brain to collect 'information'.
We are completely gone off-subject, but here is my take: I don't believe the MSM/Non-MSM divide creates any magical trust or value. The national (or international) household names (say WaPo, NYT, CNN, Fox, Slate, BBC, The Guardian, The Times, The Independent, Le Monde, Le Figaro, El Pais, Al Jazeera, etc.: extrapolate worldwide...) just have the power to do more harm/control/propaganda. Non-MSM (or non household recognizable names) are not more trustful in my view, obviously. In short: read, contrast, doubt, apply common sense.
I am sorry I can't answer your question: I read many many sources (from big name media to small time bloggers), contrast and apply common sense. I know my limitations to access the 'truth', and I live with that, always in doubt.
That said, regarding Facebook, I genuinely never used it really (I have a placeholder account), never used Instagram, never used Messenger, never installed any of these apps on my phone, never log into these web apps on my PC. I use WhatsApp constantly to communicate with friends and family across the world.
This is really all there is to it. Yet the naïve would still want to ask why, as in what's the motivation of pushing baloney? The answer is in another question: is there an industry more entrenched at the intersection of power/control/money?
There was never a popular upheaval in Lybia, the Islamists were offered to dismember the country by a few European powers (mainly France and the UK) with Arab allies for good optics (Qatar). https://iai.tv/articles/why-they-killed-gaddafi-auid-1757
That's true, I barely ever contributed here (maybe never), although I enjoy reading and following the comments. I have always been annoyed by the naïve FB-hate, particularly because it forced FB to cave to the media powers. There came a once in a lifetime opportunity to free us from the 'one-eyed-propaganda' of media conglomerates, and us the victims, shot the only probable source of escape.
Humans are easily manipulated, I agree with you. Contrast the multi-faced manipulation from an aggregator like FB with the power of the unified worldview given to you by the media conglomerates.
I have no grudge against The Guardian in particular, I have a grudge against ALL media (purporting to be 'left' leaning) that fed us lies (under the guise of R2P) to ease most wars and imperialist adventures. This post links to The Guardian, and The Guardian was most vociferous in the destruction of Libya (and Syria).
The problem is the constant naïve pounding on FB prompted by MSM hacks (drill a little bit and you'll discover the motivation: some of it surfaces from time to time, like the obvious blackmailing of FB by mass media in Australia, Canada, most of European countries, and maybe soon coming to the USA).
The Guardian, and a few other outfits in global media sold its readership very hard on the "Gadhafi killing his own people" fallacy to enable Islamist gangs to plunder and maim and kill and ruin the societal fabric of Libya (and a few southern neighbors). Since then, Libya is a wasteland, its inhabitants enslaved as a whole (as opposed to the few political (read Islamists) prisoners' under the Gadhafi dictatorship), deaths in the tens of thousands, prisoners are not accounted for under any authority.
Also the Guardian, just like most MSM holds a grudge against FB: how dare they eat their pie, all of it, and they let people escape from their 'single-eyed war-enabling worldview'?
Lay the FB 'hate' aside, will ya? For all its dehumanizing power (as much as the rest of 'social media' and technology in general) FB has not committed the 1/10000th of the harm these champions of virtue in the MSM have done for the last couple centuries (steamrolling their power on most wars, worldwide or not).