Show HN: Clean News - A cleaner curation of world news events

by sumeruchat • 2 years ago

58 78 2 years ago

Hello HN,

This a small side project I built a few months ago and I find myself using it quite often to stay up to date so I thought I should share.

Its updated every few hours.

Feedback welcome.

https://cleannews.fyi

ranger_danger2• 2 years ago

What does "clean" mean in this context?

sumeruchat26• 2 years ago

Clean in this context means clean from clickbait headlines and presenting information more factually

unsnap_biceps• 2 years ago

How do you determine factually? Or do you filter out anything that isn't described as factual?

For example, you have

"Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says North Korea has become directly involved in the war, with a senior Ukrainian intelligence official saying around 3,000 North Korean troops are now in Russia, and are training for deployment to Russian-occupied territories. (Politico)"

which I have no clue if this is factual. How did you determine that it's factual?

Mobleysoft• 2 years ago

This is awesome. Reminds me of the drudgereport when it was good. Only recommendation would be a way to see the article content summary without click through if I want a bit more info but not enough to click through and face ads. Food for thought.

sumeruchat26• 2 years ago

Thanks! Yeah thats coming soon within a month (using gpt4o).

rsingel• 2 years ago

Please don't.

Journalism is work.

The current site is a nice and fair summary (though I think the attribution to the original sources rather hidden) with easy links to the original source.

If yu start doing automated summaries, you are taking nearly all the value of someone else's work.

zeagle• 2 years ago

Perhaps one piece of news seems to be positive and most seem about death and war. I respect the site and effort but I would worry about putting myself in such a headspace. There is positive stuff in this world too just don't lose sight of it!

mattcantstop2• 2 years ago

I had the same perspective. This seemed more like a running "who was bombed today" news feed. Those events are important and meaningful, but it's not something I would come back to frequently as I have found it is not healthy for me to bombard myself with sad news which is outside of my sphere of influence.

I do like the simplicity and interface, however.

slg• 2 years ago

This seemed more like a running "who was bombed today" news feed. Those events are important and meaningful,

I beleive staying informed about world events and geopolitics is important, but some of these stories don't even have that redeeming value. The 4th story is about the death of 5 Russian mountain climbers in Nepal. In what world is that one of the most important stories for a mainstream English speaking audience?

I agree the design of the site is good, but the specific news chosen leaves a lot to be desired.

sumeruchat26• 2 years ago

I hear you. This could be the most important improvement. Making sure the news is not too negative while also telling the most important stories.

rexpop2• 2 years ago

I expect adults to govern their own self-care, but I can't expects adults to do their own journalism.

We will encounter, as our awareness of the world expands, turbulent and traumatizing information. This isn't something to be criticized--it's unavoidable up to and including our own mortality. The responsible adult does not bury their head in the sand but, instead, interrogates the foundations of their own security.

Smell a flower. Take a bubble bath. Listen to some jazz. Hug your loved ones.

But don't cork the fountain of truth.

janalsncm• 2 years ago

There are plenty of true facts that are much more optimistic. In fact the main difference between news organizations is not whether they choose to report true facts or not, but which true facts to report.

For example, if I wanted to cultivate an anti-immigrant readership I might publish all of the crimes that immigrants commit. It’s not that these stories are false, they are just not a representative sample of all stories.

don’t cork the fountain of truth

There is an opportunity cost to every moment you spend reading about far away conflicts.

So my question is, what is the actual purpose of exposing yourself to the gory play-by-play of that framing of world events? There are plenty of other stories to read. Reading about conflicts in far-away places feels important but the reality is that anything more than a passing understanding won’t improve your life in any meaningful way.

laweijfmvo• 2 years ago

seriously every article is about someone dying!

whaaaaat5• 2 years ago

There are several genocides happening in the world, hearing that people die during genocides shouldn't be particularly surprising, right?

Given the magnitudes of those involved, it seems likely they'd fill the headlines.

That said, perhaps you meant, "I would prefer to not know" or "I would prefer to not be reminded" about these genocides?

matthew-wegner3• 2 years ago

How would you compare/contrast this to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events ?

Edit: You appear to be scraping it, actually?

sumeruchat26• 2 years ago

Yes and it is a pretty good MVP using that :)

matthew-wegner3• 2 years ago

You might want to give appropriate credit! And by "might" I mean specifically https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_the_Creative...

jestersarmed• 2 years ago

I was today years old when I learned about that site. Thank you!

itohihiyt• 2 years ago

Thanks for this, never knew it existed. Wondering now if there's region specific current events.

airstrike3• 2 years ago

Pretty cool stuff. If I were building this, I'd add some tagging system so users could filter what they want to see. Politics, business, sports, entertainment, etc.

Right now it seems heavily weighted towards world politics with a sprinkle of Victoria's Secret

Specifically I'd make it like little tags that you can click on to filter for or click on an x to filter out, something like that (think like how you can "solo" or "mute" any given track on a DAW)

sumeruchat26• 2 years ago

Noted. I was thinking of those filtering tags in the top bar as well.

senectus12• 2 years ago

Can this have a RSS feed or do I need to scrape it?

sumeruchat26• 2 years ago

Noted will add a simple rss feed asap.

senectus12• 2 years ago

legend! I look forward to it.

transformi• 2 years ago

very biased and unrealiable sources though...

VWWHFSfQ• 2 years ago

who are the unbiased and reliable sources

whaaaaat5• 2 years ago

Every news outlet is a biased source. You cannot have a news outlet that is unbiased. Being an editor necessarily implies making choices about what gets published and what does not -- it's fundamentally a human judgement call.

Human judgement calls cannot be free from biases.

mmooss• 2 years ago

Thank you.

How do you choose which articles go where?

At least one is outdated - the launch of Europa Clipper.

For me, clustering articles by topic would make it much more efficient, so I could browse by topic. Easier said than done, of course, unless you are manually curating it.

sumeruchat26• 2 years ago

Hmm I would say should be doable by ai models. Will add some clickable topics / tags to the top bar

Gualdrapo• 2 years ago

Can't tell how things are looking on desktop right now, but after seeing it on mobile I wish texts had a bit bigger font.

Otherwise it's a nice job, congratulations.

sumeruchat26• 2 years ago

Thanks. The text size is a bit tricky because preferences differ but will think about it.

airstrike3• 2 years ago

I think the issue with the text is more so its length than its size. Make each headline shorter and you fix the issue on mobile. I've added this piece of feedback elsewhere

LoginSmith• 2 years ago

Thanks for that.

rNULLED• 2 years ago

i like it. how do you want to monetize?

llm_trw2• 2 years ago

1. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says North Korea has become directly involved in the war, with a senior Ukrainian intelligence official saying around 3,000 North Korean troops are now in Russia, and are training for deployment to Russian-occupied territories. (Politico)

This is not news this is propaganda, fix your filters if you want people to use your service.

whaaaaat5• 2 years ago

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says X
a senior Ukrainian intelligence official says Y and Z

Do you doubt the veracity of these two claims? The headline there actually reads as very clear statements of fact -- two people made several claims. The headline, notably, does NOT make any claims about the veracity of what Zelenskyy or the intelligence official said.

llm_trw2• 2 years ago

Congratulations, you figured out how propaganda invented in the 1950s works. You're only 80 years behind.

loxias• 2 years ago

I don't know if I would trust the implicit editorial lens of popularity on Wikipedia as my only window into the world.

tantalor• 2 years ago

Who said "only"?

matthew-wegner3• 2 years ago

It's a 1:1 scrape of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events

shadowmanifold• 2 years ago

I love it. The only thing I would want different is to maybe give control for the number of stories on the page so I could only view 10 at a time if I wanted?

For me it seemed like more effort to skim than HN but I am not sure why that is.

My first impression though is this is better than anything I use currently for news. Really a testament to what complete trash "the news" has become.

jayknight• 2 years ago

For me it seemed like more effort to skim than HN but I am not sure why that is.

For me it's the length of the headlines. HN headlines tend to be 10-12 words max. Headlines on this site are 3-4 times longer, and are significantly harder to parse (for me at least). The headlines on the actual article look to be more concise. For example, the first link right now is "At least 16 people, including the mayor of Nabatieh, Lebanon, are killed in an Israeli Air Force airstrike on a municipal building in Nabatieh, with Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati condemning the attack. (BBC News)" and when you click it you see the much more concise "Mayor and 15 others killed in Israeli strike on Lebanon council meeting". If it's trying to be a 1-sentence summary of the article, instead of a headline, I don't find that very helpful.

sumeruchat26• 2 years ago

Yeah I hear you this is going to be the next improvement

sumeruchat26• 2 years ago

I think its because the titles are a bit too verbose like another user pointed out. I will work on that next

xtracto• 2 years ago

Reminds me of boringreport.org . I would seriously consider also allowing filtering by type of news.

sumeruchat26• 2 years ago

Okay tags on top bar are coming soon.

AK42• 2 years ago

would be great to add a couple features if this goes: - user ranking/votes for the most important items - horizon scanning for emerging hot topics or trends (unknown unknowns) - best of all... curated "clean news" that is AI & human recommendations for the topics I care about at a price

sumeruchat26• 2 years ago

Yeah the end goal indeed is to have ai driven fully clean news that is unbiased. But some steps to get there slowly. I think upvoting could be a cool next idea indeed to figure out what is more important. Sort of like hacker news.

pronouncedjerry• 2 years ago

mostly negative, tragic news - either war or mass casuals.

sumeruchat26• 2 years ago

This is a common feedback I will see what I can do there.

benterix• 2 years ago

Thank you for the site. After reading a few headlines I started to have the impression the world is waiting for Putin to die, we could have at least a chance for at least one war to stop (there is no chance he will stop it while being alive).

airstrike3• 2 years ago

One more piece of feedback: I'd remove the numbers next to the headlines and pass them through your AI model to rewrite them more like what you see in the news, e.g.

10. Attorney General of Spain Álvaro García Ortiz is charged by the Supreme Court for revealing secrets about a tax fraud case involving the boyfriend of the president of the Community of Madrid Isabel Díaz Ayuso. However, García Ortiz announces that he will not resign. (RTVE)

becomes

Spain AG García Ortiz Charged with Tax Fraud Leak, Won’t Resign (RTVE)

sumeruchat26• 2 years ago

Hmm good feedback. Making the titles shorter is definitely a good idea moving forward and will be a good next step. Thanks

Gud• 2 years ago

I run a similar site, but more focused on tech/finance.

Still early alpha, https://www.stonkys.com

Feedback appreciated

ispaceman2• 2 years ago

I find it's hard to read. And it's slow to load. What is built with?

whaaaaat5• 2 years ago

Can I recommend increasing the text contrast a little for the metadata under the links for accessibility?

#666 on #ddd is a contrast ratio of 4.2:1, which might be difficult for some readers. Even moving to #555 on #ddd would move you into passing WCAG AA. Moving #454545 would pass WCAG AAA contrast ratios, and you could be pretty confident that nearly all readers would find it much easier to read!

sumeruchat26• 2 years ago

This is great feedback I will improve the contrast there. What do you think about text size?

ispaceman2• 2 years ago

Is it ok to share my site. To anybody who wants to follow local gov news in US try this one: https://rategov.us I am focus on Martin county now: https://rategov.us/?adr=Jensen%20Beach%2C%20FL You can join me to help with other counties.

sumeruchat26• 2 years ago

Thanks everyone for checking out my little website. It will forever be free although I will play with one sponsored ad at the top to monetize it at some point.

From the feedback here are the next steps.

1. Making the titles shorter with an ai model.

2. Tagging articles and putting the tags / topics on top bar for filtering.

3. Attributing sources like wikipedia in the footer.

4. Adding some more sources and have a minimum amount of positive stories. There are ongoing wars at the moment but it cannot be too depressing to read news either.

5. Improving contrast of the subtitles.

6. After titles are shortened have a way to see a very short summary (similar to the current title) somewhere

Show HN: Clean News - A cleaner curation of world news events

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