Elon's playing word games. When the average person talks about State Affiliated Media they're referring to editorial control. As far as I know NPR has always had editorial control and goes to great lengths to maintain neutrality in their writing. They've certainly screwed up in major ways before, but compared to MSNBC, Fox, the NYT, NYP, and CNN I'd say NPR looks like a saint.
The irony I see here is that Twitter is on record as to being involved in suppression exercises around COVID, where they basically acted as the governments hands to suppress legitimate voices. Given that, Twitter needs to wear its own State Affiliated Media badge. Hell, what do you even call an entity that willfully suppresses valid and good information that is not favorable to the government? A state apologist?
I was going to mention Radio Free Europe as a really good example of egregious, western state-sponsored media, but then on a lark, I looked up how well regarded they are, bias-wise, and now I don't know what to think.
Turns out many democratic systems actually like politically neutral media that inform the public in the way they need to be informed in order to function in a democratic system. Healthy democratic governments abhor propaganda.
Don’t worry about the watchdogs. Just read the content. It’s true that RFE/RL focuses on human rights and democracy, and authoritarian countries don’t look very good in those categories. But the reporting is factual, and their reporters run great risks. Several are in jail in Belarus, Russia, etc.
That was kind of my read on it, which is what sent me into a tailspin. I ended up questioning all the tools I had to evaluate a source without taking it on as another job.
But it turns out that the difference in bias of RFE and any number of out-and-out propaganda mills is that if a story is inconvenient to RFE's agenda, they'll de-emphasize it. On the other hand, an out-and-out propaganda mill will just make shit up to fit their narrative.
So where I landed was that RFE was ultimately reliable, but subject to the same little human biases as NPR or AP News or the Financial Times, or any number of other sources that I do trust. Their main source of bias is a bit more of an elephant in the room, but if anything, it makes them a bit harder on their masters.
Don’t worry about the watchdogs. You can just read the content to see. It’s true they’re interested in human rights news, and authoritarian countries don’t look good on that subject. But the content is factual, and their reporters work at great risk.
Hey, just want to say thanks for saying that you changed your mind. It's hard to do on public forums and just in general. It's even harder to say that you don;t know something. Thanks for saying this.
I think they were trying to say because Twitter successfully suppressed conspiracy theories in the past that it gives them a pass when the information happened to not be a conspiracy theory. If that was the takeaway, I fully disagree. If you get into the suppression game, even for the right reasons, you deserve whatever comes your way when you're wrong even once. That's how we keep powerful entities honest.
covid misinformation is a conspiracy theory, suppressing idiocy is virtuous
"oh but if you allow a platform to suppress stupid shit then how do you know that they won't suppress other blah blah blah" judgment my bro, it is ok if things are subjective
I'm not criticizing them for suppressing conspiracy theories, or even idiocy, I'm criticizing them for getting it wrong. Sure, it's fine if things are subjective, but it's also fine when hell rains down on you for being so seriously wrong.
The kind of flamewar comments you posted to this thread will get an account banned on HN, so please don't do that. We want thoughtful, respectful, and above all curious conversation here.
Edit: I took a look at your recent account history and saw two relevant things: (1) a lot of good comments, and (2) no other cases of flamewar. Thank you! That's great, and should make the current issue easy to avoid in the future.
I've been personally blocked on multiple forums for saying that we don't have enough information to say that there wasn't a lab leak.
I'm not making a leak claim, but stating as an expert that it's malpractice to characterize your assumptions as facts and without a long and detailed audit we could not know what we'd need to know to make a factual statement. No audit of the Wuhan lab had been done so we could not know what happened.
The government pressured old-Twitter to ban people who pointed out this fact.
> suppressing idiocy is virtuous
Are you applying to have your account blocked then? Because what I'm saying is tautological.
> judgment my bro, it is ok if things are subjective
For your opinion, sure. For policy, no. If we can't attempt to objectively show that something is wrong we can't claim to be censoring misinformation.
it's a good thing that everyone who holds any amount of power is always purely, perfectly virtuous and altruistic in their judgement—if this wasn't the case, that sure would complicate things, wouldn't it?
Edit: it looks like you've been using HN primarily for political and ideological battle. That's not allowed here, regardless of what you're battling for or against. We ban accounts that cross this line (for more explanation see https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...), so please stop doing this.
yeah that is definitely a requisite assumption of my position
for the same reason we don't allow governments to enact laws or provide any kind of justice system, because there is no way to guarantee they will be always perfectly correct
The irony I see here is that Twitter is on record as to being involved in suppression exercises around COVID, where they basically acted as the governments hands to suppress legitimate voices. Given that, Twitter needs to wear its own State Affiliated Media badge. Hell, what do you even call an entity that willfully suppresses valid and good information that is not favorable to the government? A state apologist?