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Posted on 05/22/2026 11:36:26 AM PDT by Theo
I've noticed that user ransomnote ( https://freerepublic.com/tag/by:ransomnote/index?tab=comments;brevity=full;options=no-change ) publishes numerous X posts every day.
I work with AI every day, and it feels like maybe he's just set up an AI agent/bot to pull from X and share on FR throughout the day. Kinda weird.
I asked him about it in a comment, and he didn't reply.
I don't want to be the blog police. But I was curious if FReepers are OK that an increasing number of FR posts are simply shared from X. Or if we'd prefer that news articles from online publications are shared instead.
I've been here a while, so I figured I earned the right to ask the question.
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How about a courtesy ping?
And, NO, we don’t have problems with X posts, since the news hits X, first, typically ... and, is then picked up by news outlets.
It doesn’t bother me. I do as well, because that is the main source of information nowadays............
Do tell.
I suspect someone who comments "I work with AI every day..."
Ransomnote is a serious poster, heavy on content. A d when people ask me where I get the news they’ve never heard I tell them that podcasters are the new “news”. The other sources d are primarily propaganda.
X is where you get access to people who may be curious. But it’s not good for content heavy posting like here. It makes sense to move the content and discussion here.
X cuts to the chase. Let’s say there is a story about a muslim that rams his suv into a crowd. I can go to Cnn or Fox and deal with a long long article, explaining this or that, whatever. Lots of pop up ads, lots of nonsense, and maybe a link at the bottom to the video with a commercial. Half the time, I just close out and move on. X is pretty good at making a clip of the video you want to see, maybe compressed to about 5 seconds and you get to see the muslim running over the people in the street. Boom. Muslim runs car into crowd. Simple. No nonsense.
We are living in a post-literate world.
Things are only going to get worse.
You should ask for this nonsense thread to be pulled, Theo.
I’m not a fan of getting news from X. It’s always low on details, often badly written, tends to be sensationalistic, and, even though it often gets a “scoop”, it is often fake news, more so, IMHO, than even mainstream news. YMMV.
Ransomnote is one of hundreds of great posters on FreeRepublic.
Lol... I dropped in to say ransomnote is real. Or I spent years having private discussions with a bot by PM.
ransomnote is probably the most dedicated prolific poster on this board... My hat is off to this user’s personal efforts and research over the years... :)
A lot has in the last 25 years. The “traditional” news sources are in increasing disrepute, and “modern” social media sources have taken over. Not that they’re in any better repute, but they do seem to post earlier because there’s no wait for verification required.
You have to apply a bunch of pretty strong filters to weed out the spam, sh*tposts, false/fake posts, AI, etc. etc. IMO it’s become more of a chore than it’s worth, most of the time.
FReeper ransomnote does post a lot of fringe-y stuff, but a fair percentage turns out to be timely and accurate eventually.
Also it’s possible ransomnote is female (unless you know otherwise), I haven’t evidence either way from recent posts, but I might have missed the clue. :-)
I’m personally fine with news aggregates, as long as what is being posted is the truth.
I concur. As a non-X user, and one who avoids social media in general, it is very frustrating to see the increase in referral to X posts, as well as youtube videos as a news source. These generally offer next to zero context or analysis, and assume the reader (or viewer) has some antecedent knowledge of the latest viral events, videos, trends, acronyms etc.
We are truly living in a post-literate society and it will ultimately lead to an inability to think about a subject for more than 5 seconds without needing further stimulus.
Actually, stuff shared from X is mostly okay by me because I'm not on social media, not X or anything else, and so I'd miss all that Great Stuff™ if ransomnote didn't repost it here. :-=)
Some X is ok if it is well chosen but we do now see a lot of great headlines that turn out to just be an x somebody or some talking head guy instead of the news, that goes for youtube also, instead of clicking on the 30 second headline video it is a 15 minute talking head talking about the 30 seconds of video.
I’d be okay with this if it was actually quality content, but they’re often some random attention seeker making false, misleading claims using clickbaity headlines.
X isn’t meant to be long drawn out content. It is fine with me. If the news is big, you can find longer articles about the same content that may come from the short X post news. Those may, or may not be, tinted with the authors personal opinion though. Most people on FR can discern that.
Same here. News is often on X before it hits main sites. It’s a very good source of information IMO.
Personally, I look askance at anything that says BOOM, BREAKING or BOMBSHELL in the title.
Or any unnecessary excerpting or self-promotion.
Otherwise I’m fine with anything that is properly categorized.
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