Anybody considering leaving Twitter?

[SimonNZ]

Principles do not govern speech suppression.  Ideology does.

Horseshit.

Spin may be coming from both directions, but toxic fever-dream conspiracy-laden disinformation from only one.

Show me them using moderation against an ideology rather than against dangerous incendiary lies and then we'll talk - unless you personally equate the later with the former, which would surprise me not at all.


but this must be the tenth time I've risen to this bit of bait from you, so I'm stepping away now

[greg]

Spin may be coming from both directions, but toxic fever-dream conspiracy-laden disinformation from only one.

Lol not really, toxic conspiracy disinformation festers in pretty much any sort of political direction.

[milk]

Lol not really, toxic conspiracy disinformation festers in pretty much any sort of political direction.

Absolutely.

[greg]

Maybe the perception of that is caused by only sticking to specific media sources which won't report news that make them, or whatever team they support, look bad.

Example- I bet no one here is aware of how Timcast has been swatted over 15 times (a couple times I've even see it as the show is live on air). And recently there was an attack where the home was burglarized and shot in.

(Swatting is basically attempted murder because it can result in people getting killed- I can think of at least one story where someone swatted another person and they ended up dead).

It's all politically based, too. Although the show is pretty much center libertarian-leaning overall, and open to guests of any political background, there's leftists that don't like the stance on the culture war issues (especially stances like the whole "groomers" stance) and are consistently doing these murder attempts. If they disagree, they could get on the show- but instead they chose violence.

(There is also another youtuber who associates with the show who has been swatted 6 times already).

But to tie back into the previous point: no mainstream political outlet is going to call out, or even acknowledge the existence at all, of the nonsense conspiracy theories from their side- or if they did buy into them and were proven wrong later, they will just drop it like it never happened.

In general, none of the two sides are interested in improving their own side, they are only interested in attacking the other side and making them look bad. So unless someone watches media from the other side or media that address both sides, then the mere existence of conspiracy nonsense coming from their own side will appear to not even exist.

[Todd]

Twitter Files: Founder Jack Dorsey Urges Musk To Release 'Everything Without Filter'

Billionaire battle!

And what has Jack Dorsey been up to these days?  Among other ventures, there's this:

Jack Dorsey-Backed East African Bitcoin Miner Gridless Raises $2M

What does or will the company do? 

"Gridless designs, builds and operates bitcoin mining sites alongside small-scale renewable energy producers in rural Africa where excess energy is unused. Gridless serves as the anchor tenant, financing the construction and managing the operation of data centers in rural communities where traditional industrial or commercial customers are unavailable."

[milk]

a debate between Matt Taibbi and Douglas Murray vs. Malcom Gladwell and Michell Goldberg on the trustworthiness of the mainstream media. It's pretty darn interesting and it does have some relevance to the question at hand, though only tangentially. I predict that people are going to hear what they want from this depending on their biases and ideological commitments. I would point out that, based on the vote taken before and after the debate, Gladwell/Goldberg lost. I think they did make some good points though I ultimately lost a lot of respect for Gladwell here. I used to like him. He's very insulting but he gets his comeuppance. The link DOES work I think, even though it doesn't look like it.

[Todd]

the trustworthiness of the mainstream media

The what now? 

I distinguish between the corporate press (as distinct from the independent press) and the media broadly, with the latter including pure entertainment.  Pure entertainment does reinforce the values and the agenda(s) of the corporate entities that produce, publish, air, and distribute the various forms of media (eg, movies, television series, radio, podcasts, recorded music), but they should necessarily be taken as fluff.  I recognize that some people take these forms of entertainment seriously, and I recognize the propaganda value.  The owners and managers of the corporate entities, and government officials who grant special access (eg, access to military hardware and locations for action flicks), do as well.

The corporate press is necessarily limited in what it can and will report and is now entirely untrustworthy.  This is in contrast to the late 20th Century, when it was almost entirely untrustworthy.  I use NBC and its associated networks as a sort of bellwether, at least for televised corporate press, and it is awful.  It routinely runs stories touting flat-out consumerism.  The day after Thanksgiving, it ran two full-length stories about shopping.  The war was relegated to the third story.  That it was Black Friday does not in any way excuse the content.  The political bias is open.  It has pretty much always been there, but now it is blatant.  (The bias at a competing network should have been obvious when Mr Stephanopoulos got his job.)  Current war coverage is pro-war, though less gung-ho than before.  That is not to say that the coverage is any less bellicose, just that it has been deprioritized in line with polling and viewer preferences.  Prior wars this century received laudatory coverage, despite attempts at critical coverage.  I'd say that the embedded journalism of the Second Iraq War was the worst, but the nadir for me remains the coverage of the landing of forces in Somalia in 1992, when the corporate press was waiting for the US military on the beach.  And this was after the coverage of the First Gulf War, which made celebrities of some journalists.  Covid represented a new low in corporate press coverage until the Russo-Ukrainian War arrived.  One can watch videos, preserved for posterity, of news anchors repeating the line that people who received vaccines would stop transmission and be protected from the virus and would not get sick.  It is impossible to plead ignorance or good intentions; basics of epidemiology were known when the lies were being told.  This is not at all to say that people should not be vaccinated, just that the corporate press lied about benefits and downplayed risks. 

Independent press, whether online (eg, Substack) or in some independent journals, typically left-leaning or outright left-wing (eg, Mother Jones) still offer or can offer decent or good coverage.  (And ICN offers outstanding environmental reporting, even with the obvious bias.)  PBS still offers decent general coverage, at least in factual reporting; its "analysis" is biased.  (Analyses are biased by nature.)  Of course, the same applies to Fox News, not because I say so - I can't stand Fox and don't get cable anyway - it is reported by media observers.  Alas, even some employees of more independent journals cannot keep their biases under wraps, as the latest mini-brouhaha regarding a Mother Jones writer shows.  And even the once great Frontline is now airing more and more stories produced by major corporate outlets.  Social media has some potential, but in general, it's a hot mess.  The only hope to learn what is going on is to rely on basic reporting from multiple outlets to ensure the basic facts are correct, with some non-Western outlets in the mix to make sure Western biases are checked.  I rely on Singaporean and Indian outlets for that.  Relying only on a handful of corporate press outlets is a surefire way to be misled.

[SimonNZ]

I cringe at the overuse and misuse of the word "bias" in these discussions. That a reporter is known to lean left or right doesn't mean they can't do honest and diligent work, and like Mother Jones mentioned above there are so many examples we could point to easily.

 I cringe especially hard at accusations of bias in journalism from people who proudly say they never read it, but only watch amateur Youtube armchair bloviators who are equally proud of their ignorance and accept blindly their assurance that traditional media can be disregarded entirely as all tarred with the same brush.

It's the "hot mess" aside in Todd's post that needs to be expanded for some here to the length of Todd's post.

[Karl Henning]

I cringe at the overuse and misuse of the word "bias" in these discussions. That a reporter is known to lean left or right doesn't mean they can't do honest and diligent work

Yes, the glib overuse of bias is a badge of intellectual laziness.

[Todd]

From Axios: Musk's second "Twitter Files" claims "secret blacklists"

The use of quotes is instructive.  It is universally agreed upon on the internet that blacklists are acceptable, especially and particularly if a user violates terms of service, which are sacrosanct. 

[greg]

and accept blindly their assurance that traditional media can be disregarded entirely as all tarred with the same brush.

People disregarding entirely is a bad move, I wouldn't agree with their approach.

But no one is taking this stance blindly. There's a pretty solidly bad enough track record from traditional media to where it's best to remain skeptical of it at all times (of course, better to be skeptical of all media as well).

[Todd]

There's a pretty solidly bad enough track record from traditional media to where it's best to remain skeptical of it at all times (of course, better to be skeptical of all media as well).

I am sure the billionaires and other ultra-wealthy who own the corporate press delight in seeing the hoi polloi leap to the defense of the otherwise defenseless corporate press. 

[milk]

I cringe at the overuse and misuse of the word "bias" in these discussions. That a reporter is known to lean left or right doesn't mean they can't do honest and diligent work, and like Mother Jones mentioned above there are so many examples we could point to easily.

 I cringe especially hard at accusations of bias in journalism from people who proudly say they never read it, but only watch amateur Youtube armchair bloviators who are equally proud of their ignorance and accept blindly their assurance that traditional media can be disregarded entirely as all tarred with the same brush.

It's the "hot mess" aside in Todd's post that needs to be expanded for some here to the length of Todd's post.

who does that?

[milk]

People disregarding entirely is a bad move, I wouldn't agree with their approach.

But no one is taking this stance blindly. There's a pretty solidly bad enough track record from traditional media to where it's best to remain skeptical of it at all times (of course, better to be skeptical of all media as well).

I had a long bad experience with a friend who plunged into conspiracy theories and ended up dead. Literally. He jumped in a river. He was actually published a lot on "alternative" media sites. One needs balance. I used to only read center-left and left media. Now I'm surrounded by those same people and most of them can't tolerate other points of view. Balance!

[Todd]

From The Atlantic (an ultra-wealthy person's plaything): Elon Musk Is a Far-Right Activist

An official verdict.

[greg]

From The Atlantic (an ultra-wealthy person's plaything): Elon Musk Is a Far-Right Activist

An official verdict.

Lol. And with the evil picture as well.

I can't even read this crap, just one sentence is so terrible.

In five words, Musk manages to mock transgender and nonbinary people, signal his disdain for public-health officials, and send up a flare to far-right shitposters and trolls.

1. "Mock" them? Isn't that a bit far? He's just joking around.
2. Disdain for public health officials: so Fauci is all public health officials, huh?
3. What are shitposters and trolls really going to do? "Sending a flare" doesn't really mean anything, he is just airing his goofy thoughts while taking a dump, people can take things how they want, he isn't even directly addressing anyone.


Ah, quality journalism I see.

[Todd]

Ah, quality journalism I see.

It is an ideological form of writing heavily reliant on fashionable jargon.  One reads it all over the internet, sometimes on music forums.

[greg]

It is an ideological form of writing heavily reliant on fashionable jargon.  One reads it all over the internet, sometimes on music forums.

Dude, "fashionable jargon" is a pretty good term.
I have noticed over the last few years how, once a certain term gets coined in the mainstream, people here in GMG will adopt it suddenly. But then after a while, it's gone.
Remember "stochastic terrorism"? When is the last time you've heard that?


Of course, this is mostly an internet-wide thing... I wonder if those spikes are all caused by news articles?
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=stochastic%20terrorism


Not that it's necessarily a bad thing... it's just... weird to me.
I just have a weird allergy to adopting stuff like that... especially in school- example, someone was trying to make conversation with me, joking about doing the Harlem Shake, and I couldn't help but cringe hard.


It's like, bro... I'm not adopting shit, I'm the innovator here. That's not my role. People either adopt my shit or they don't, whatever.


btw, here's a graph of the Harlem Shake. Just one big spike. What uselessness, fleeting trends suck lol.
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=harlem%20shake

[JBS]

I saw "stochastic terror" being used today in reference to this
https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/12/tech/twitter-files-yoel-roth/index.html

[SimonNZ]

Remember "stochastic terrorism"? When is the last time you've heard that?

Today. Wrt Elon's shit-tweeting, including that Fauci one.

You say that people can "take it however they want", but it should be clear by now that how many want to take it is violently. Perpetuating fever-cpnspiracies like this can only end with someone getting hurt. It's more than just lolz, though, unlike you, I fail to see any lolz  here at all, just a sad and desperate need for attention, consequences be damned.