Notfox.com 06/30/23
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In 2012, I started a website called tiltish, intending to create a
platform for individuals to rate / score news articles (how they
"tilt" on the political spectrum), and discuss their contents. I
thought it might be an interesting way to identify media bias. It was
a great opportunity to wrap my head around ajax and a lot of other web
programming concepts, and it fed the interest I had at the time in
general news media.
Through the development and beta-testing cycles of that project, I
very quickly came to realize something: all of the news media outlets
were biased, and in the same ways. In fact, they functioned as a
collective would, and not as individual outlets should.
By the time the tiltish platform was complete and functional, I shut
it down in disgust. There was nothing redeemable about the so-called
news, in my mind at the time.
Around 2015, I decided to attempt to highlight the collective
deception of the news media, and a site called notfox.com was born. It
had a simple goal: demonstrate that the mainstream media outlets
operated in lock-step. Or, otherwise viewed, shine a light on the
established ideas surrounding agenda-setting theory.
Recently, I decided that notfox.com was no longer meaningful to me,
and I shut it down. In all honesty, it had only a handful of users
that I was aware of, and it was a sore spot. I turned it off and put
the domain up for sale.
Yesterday, I got a notice that the domain was going to expire, and I
needed to make a decision. I had done some searching while the domain
was for sale, to see if I could find any potential buyers who could
use the domain. Ultimately, after running it for so many years, I
decided that I wasn't ready to let it go yet.
Today, notfox.com is back online. I've added some things that will
hopefully offend everyone: first, I added Newsmax into the mix. It's
just as idiotic as the rest of them, and I figured it ought to be
included. Second, I've added the Backroom; a place for more fringe
websites to be evaluated. You see, there's a whole seedy underbelly to
news media in 2023, which is still inextricably connected to the main
media machine, and it needs to be exposed. Because of the audience it
caters to (who have an affinity for pattern recognition), it tends
to appear more chaotic and less cohesive. That appearance is a
deception--the fringe media has the same power structure as the
mainstream media. If I'm wrong, please email me, I would love to know
where I can find anything akin to "news" that isn't a manipulated
mess.
Going forward, I may also add a section to vent (a blog, if you will)
about things related to news. Who knows what else.
Removing the tinfoil hat for now, I guess I just wanted to post an
update somewhere, so those who may have used notfox.com in the past
could hear that it is back online. Maybe cutting of my 1-5 users was
an irreversible act, I don't know. But, I figured I'd try.
And if you haven't looked at notfox.com, this might be a good time to
have a gander. I've had shockingly little feedback on it, so I have no
idea if it makes sense to anyone who isn't in my brain (just me?). It
doesn't do a lot, but I enjoy what it does do (to a degree). I'm here
if you have questions or comments.
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There used to be a gopher version of notfox, when I was hosted on SDF.
I've migrated that over here, you can access it with this link:
gopher://consensus.circumlunar.space:70/1/notfox
