Show HN: Clean News - A cleaner curation of world news events
cleannews.fyiHello 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.
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!
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
I think upvoting of stories should give us a bit more relevant stories at the top like another user pointed out.
> what is the actual purpose of exposing yourself to the gory play-by-play of that framing of world events?
...to wit:
> That people everywhere may better understand the Circumstances of Public Affairs, both abroad and at home; which may not only direct their Thoughts at all times, but at some times also to assist their Businesses and Negotiations[, and] that something may be done towards the Curing, or at least the Charming of that Spirit of Lying, which prevails amongst us. (Publick Occurrences, Boston, 1690)
seriously every article is about someone dying!
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?
The climate would be more important. Global economy. Local issues. All more relevant and important to someone not directly affected by one of those wars.
Those wars do affect climate. They do affect global economy.
Imagine thinking a genocide was not relevant to you... "[Country Name] is eradicating [type of people]" requires a level of state power that is globally impactful. The US, for instance, is party to some of these genocides. If you are a US citizen, you are directly affected -- your taxes, your representatives, your opportunity costs, etc. are being used to eradicate [type of people] rather than something beneficial. Same if you are basically anywhere in the world.
You aren't disconnected from those things.
And you're likely bankrolling those things with your taxes.
So yeah, keep yourself and your government accountable.
How would you compare/contrast this to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events ?
Edit: You appear to be scraping it, actually?
Thanks for this, never knew it existed. Wondering now if there's region specific current events.
I was today years old when I learned about that site. Thank you!
Yes and it is a pretty good MVP using that :)
You might want to give appropriate credit! And by "might" I mean specifically https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_the_Creative...
Good point will add that to the footer asap.
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)
Noted. I was thinking of those filtering tags in the top bar as well.
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.
Thanks! Yeah thats coming soon within a month (using gpt4o).
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.
Yeah fair I have had similar thoughts on this subject. Maybe some kind of ai companion that translates news into your local language and can answer your questions directly with voice would be something interesting.
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)
Hmm good feedback. Making the titles shorter is definitely a good idea moving forward and will be a good next step. Thanks
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.
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
7. And finally add login and upvoting so we can rank stories better.
From what I understand people like the design so that will remain unchanged.
Feel free to suggest anything I missed
Also 0. Add Rss feed
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!
This is great feedback I will improve the contrast there. What do you think about text size?
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.
>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.
Yeah I hear you this is going to be the next improvement
I think its because the titles are a bit too verbose like another user pointed out. I will work on that next
What does "clean" mean in this context?
Clean in this context means clean from clickbait headlines and presenting information more factually
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?
When i say factual i mean a description thats straightforward and objective. No sensationalism or misleading framing to provoke an emotional reaction
Fully makes sense plus I appreciate the source right there in the title so you can use that as well to decide how trustworthy it might be. Well done
Thanks for the kind words :)
Are you changing the titles to remove anything emotional or misleading manually, through AI, or some other way?
The source I am using is already doing a good job at that but i plan to use more sources (for example reddit) and use gpt to remove misleading titles if there is enough interest in the project.
I worked in the energy+mineral intelligence domain developing work that was subscribed to by investors and later sold to S&P (of the index).
The "is it factual" rule here is simpler than you may think* - in your example, can it be verified by multiple credible sources that
* Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said "as quoted", and that
* A senior Ukrainian intelligence official said "as quoted"
If so then it's fine to report that .. it's factual that they made the statements, whether what they said is also true is a seperate matter that may or may not be addressed in another reported snippet.
In the aggragator case here they're not even making the claim that "Volodymyr Zelenskyy said {X}" .. instead they are asserting as fact that "Politico reported that {Y}" .. which can be verified by a secure link to the Politico source.
* Until recently ...
Today, of course, there's highly credible in appearence generated video of public figures saying things they never said - this is the current challenge.
The means to address that is to chain reported news to sources and develop better tools to probe that chain for BS. A work in progress.
What's considered "credible" is also going to be endlessly argued as well. Same for clickbait.
Thats interesting. Will use this definition in the about page in the future :)
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.
Hmm I would say should be doable by ai models. Will add some clickable topics / tags to the top bar
I run a similar site, but more focused on tech/finance.
Still early alpha, https://www.stonkys.com
Feedback appreciated
I find it's hard to read. And it's slow to load. What is built with?
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.
Thanks. The text size is a bit tricky because preferences differ but will think about it.
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
Right making the titles shorter is definitely a good next step
I don't know if I would trust the implicit editorial lens of popularity on Wikipedia as my only window into the world.
Who said "only"?
It's a 1:1 scrape of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events
I am adding more sources asap. As many readers have pointed out the wikipedia event source is very negative news indeed
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
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.
Reminds me of boringreport.org . I would seriously consider also allowing filtering by type of news.
Okay tags on top bar are coming soon.
I like how you're extraction and the scrapers for the cite. Check out this 3000 line algorithm for this same task but a bit more advanced
https://airesearch.js.org/
Thanks for this I am playing with some different ways to make this better with AI and definitely will take a looksie!
Can this have a RSS feed or do I need to scrape it?
Noted will add a simple rss feed asap.
legend! I look forward to it.
Thanks for that.
mostly negative, tragic news - either war or mass casuals.
This is a common feedback I will see what I can do there.
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).
i like it. how do you want to monetize?
>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.
> 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.
Congratulations, you figured out how propaganda invented in the 1950s works. You're only 80 years behind.
very biased and unrealiable sources though...
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.
who are the unbiased and reliable sources