Topic: News Feed

A new policy announced by Carrie Lake will see One America News (OAN) provide a free news feed to Voice of America's foreign audiences, replacing the domestic workforce of RFA. The hosts review OAN's current headlines, including praise for Karoline Leavitt and reports on a "Gold Rush 2.0" and Bitcoin boom.

An anonymous TV professional reported that local news stations were overwhelmed by the speed at which the Associated Press (AP) called state results on election night, sometimes with 0% of precincts reporting. Many stations have since requested features to bypass the AP data feed in future elections. The AP is described as an "incestuous" part of the news industry that exerts significant control over the national narrative.

The hosts debate the functionality of social media feeds, comparing Twitter's chronological order to Facebook's algorithmic sorting. There is a discussion on "shadow banning" and how platforms may be filtering political content, such as the feeds of Representative Devin Nunes. One host argues that Facebook is losing users due to poor interface changes, while the other maintains that the platform remains dominant despite personal grievances.

A 2014 study published in the PNAS regarding "emotional contagion" on Facebook is revisited, detailing how the platform manipulated news feeds to influence user moods. The experiment found that users exposed to more positive posts tended to post positive content, while negative feeds induced negative posts, though extreme positivity could backfire. The hosts note that Facebook's End User License Agreement (EULA) grants the company legal permission to conduct such psychological research without explicit real-time consent.

Chef Rob McHugh announces a No Agenda meetup at his new gastropub, The Fat Monk, in New York City on April 25th. Additionally, producer Nick Hampshire is credited with creating custom RSS feeds for the whitehouse.gov website.

Adam Curry details his sophisticated "Freedom Controller" system, an RSS aggregator and information management tool developed with Dave Jones. He describes a rigorous preparation cycle involving 780 feeds, C-SPAN monitoring, and deep dives into Form 990 tax filings for nonprofits. This process culminates in a structured rundown and the generation of detailed XML-based show notes.

NewsProNet is a service that provides pre-produced "Sweeps Feed" news stories to local broadcasters across the U.S., including affiliates of ABC, CBS, and Scripps. These stories are often designed to be "highly promotable" to drive ratings during sweeps periods. The company, which counts NBC as an early investor, allows local stations to air professional content with minimal local staff involvement.

Adam Curry expresses frustration with the Google Plus interface despite the growing No Agenda community there. He requests that a listener create an RSS feed to scrape posts from the community. The hosts emphasize that the No Agenda News Network remains the primary source for vetted stories.

Adam Curry reflects on his daily life in Amsterdam, noting that the primary difference in his workflow is the shift in time zones. He observes that being on the "other side of the clock" provides different RSS feeds and news perspectives, which he considers testing as a permanent experiment.

Concerns are raised regarding the infiltration of alternative media groups by government figures like Cass Sunstein. The No Agenda News Network platform requires constant vetting to remove unreliable aggregators like Infowars while promoting high-quality contributors. The system relies on RSS feeds from independent blogs to maintain a decentralized news flow.

The hosts provide instructions for the No Agenda News Network, a community-driven news aggregator. They urge users to submit unique, independent reporting rather than mainstream feeds or large alternative sites like InfoWars or Natural News. The goal is to maintain a feed of singular and useful information for the "slaves of Gitmo Nation."

The hosts examine the sudden explosion of media reports regarding bedbug infestations in movie theaters and classrooms. They suggest the mattress industry may be funding the PR campaign to encourage consumers to replace their mattresses every seven years, despite a lack of evidence that age correlates with infestation.