7 ms·

I stopped reading this site some years ago. It had, and probably still has some interesting opinins and analysis. Most content is pretty far fetched / sensation

by maze-le 11y ago

I stopped reading this site some years ago. It had, and probably still has some interesting opinins and analysis. Most content is pretty far fetched / sensationalist, but if you have your grain of salt, this is not a problem, since most media outlets do this in one form or another. About 2 years ago the tenor of the publications shifted from libertarian to more and more reactionary (bordering on proto-fascist). When I skip the articles nowdays, I think that the authors have no problem with authoritarianism, as long as taxes are reduced and social welfare is gutted (it is obviously not stated as such, but most opinion-pieces speak for themself). I don't know what could have caused that shift, but I think you can generate more traffic and hence more profit, Lokey view on this explains a lot.

alistproducer2 11y ago
My thoughts exactly. I was a daily reader of ZH going back to its very beginning. The tone of it's articles and comments became unbearable ~2011 so now I only go there a couple times a year out of nostalgia.
- 21 11y ago
  I was IP banned from that site around 2011 because I left a comment saying that if you did what the site was preaching in the previous two years (2009-2011), meaning shorting the market because the second collapse is just around the corner, you would have lost a ton of money.
alistproducer2 11y ago
>I think that the authors have no problem with authoritarianism Like any conspiracy site, it's going to attract people who share a view of the world in which everything must be orchestrated, controlled - a reason for all things. Randomness has no place in the mind of a conspiracy theorist. The order provided by conspiracies comfort the conspiracy theorist: paradoxically making the world feel safer, more ordered while simultaneously believing that evil people have devoted their lives to ruining yours. If you think about it, such a psychology is naturally authoritarian-leaning. Such a mind yearns for stability, order and control.
- tomp 11y ago
  So, all people who were saying that NSA is spying on the whole internet (before Snowden, that was the conspiracy) were secretly authoritarian?!
  - tptacek 11y ago
    No, the spying the NSA does on the Internet falls more into the category of "worst kept secrets" than "conspiracy theories".
    - tomp 11y ago
      You could say that about all conspiracy theories, especially those that have since come true.
      - tptacek 11y ago
        So what? That's not analysis, it's numerology. Just because some things are true doesn't mean all theories are equally deserving of dignity. But the notion that the USG was monitoring the Internet was entirely deserving of dignity: * It's their job * The software security industry is full of people who used to hack professionally for them * There'd been a major news story roughly every other year since the 1990s Echelon thing about NSA dragnet surveillance There are still things people say about NSA that have the tenor of conspiracy theories --- some of them being things Snowden actually said! --- and you might be able to make observations about the character of the people who believe those things (I don't know, that was the other commenter's point). But the basic outline of what NSA is doing with the Internet is not a conspiracy theory.
        saalweachter 11y ago
        Another important point-- once you get into the conspiracy theory mindset, it's not so much that a conspiracy or some conspiracies happen. There's a tendency to believe that all conspiracies are true, even the contradictory ones. Your average conspiracy theorist doesn't just believe the NSA is spying on Americans [they better be spying on non-Americans; we taxpayers are paying them a lot of money to do so] or that Putin has had a few guys killed. Your average conspiracy theorist believes that the Moon landing was faked, JFK was assassinated by a coordinated effort of at least three different groups, there are cures to cancer and all other diseases being kept secret by corporations and/or the gov'ment, Hitler is still alive, aliens have visited the Earth, are living here, and have secret treaties with various states, the UN has real power, various diseases [eg, HIV] are man-made, and various biblical artifacts have been found and kept secret. You rarely find a conspiracy theorist who believes one crazy thing, it's almost all or nothing. It's this weird credulity veiled as skepticism for the establishment
TorKlingberg 11y ago
Could you link to a couple of examples? I am not interested enough to go searching. I did find an anti-vaxxer piece on the frontpage, which did not exactly inspire trust: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-04-28/why-our-children-should-hate-us-read-lance-simmens-article-banned-huffington-post http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-04-28/why-our-children-sh...
- tomp 11y ago
  > Some very, very powerful and influential people are terrified of it and are doing everything they can to make sure it never sees the light of day. Which makes me infinitely more curious. Which is quite solid logic - why would "they" want to ban something unless they're afraid of it?
  - pjc50 11y ago
    Maybe they're afraid of it because it's genuinely misleading and dangerous to public health? Just because innocent people are sometimes harassed by the authorities does not mean you can use harrasment by authorities as evidence that someone's actually in the right.
- tcoppi 11y ago
  They post things like this all the time. I would take it not as them editorially advocating the position, but rather getting information otherwise censored by other media out there. Sometimes the information is not reported for good reason, such as this. You need a very good BS and relevancy filter to find the few nuggets of gold that are put out maybe a few times a year by ZH.
  - themartorana 11y ago
    An "even a broken clock is right twice a day" method of viewing a content publication is a funny way of explaining away dangerous "journalism" for a couple of stuck clock hands.
    - 11y ago
actionwords 11y ago
About 2 years ago the tenor of the publications shifted from libertarian to more and more reactionary (bordering on proto-fascist). When I skip the articles nowdays, I think that the authors have no problem with authoritarianism, as long as taxes are reduced and social welfare is gutted Clearly you don't realize that fascists would increase taxes AND social welfare.
natrius 11y ago
In a world of centralized media, the incentives led outlets to promote viewpoints supported by the elite and omit viewpoints that would offend them. Their access to viewers, leads and advertising dollars required the party line product we all recognize. In a world of decentralized media, you can't get readers to keep coming back if you're just another mainstream news source. Instead, you have to choose a niche viewpoint and convince readers that your outlet is the only place they can get information about it. This results in a competition between niche news outlets to present as extreme a viewpoint as their readers will tolerate, or create new viewpoints that can attract an audience. The world is being radicalized by capital. Dividing us is profitable.
- spectrum1234 11y ago
  "The world is being radicalized by capital. Dividing us is profitable." Maybe, but let's never forget centralized media is much, much worse. Many seem to forget this unfortunately. Choice is always a good thing.
- danielweber 11y ago
  The simpler, less sinister explanation, is that normal moderate viewpoints do not pay the bills, but extreme and sensational viewpoints -- whatever the flavor -- do.
  - maze-le 11y ago
    There is truth in that, its a sad state of affairs...
  - natrius 11y ago
    That's exactly what I'm saying. It's not a conspiracy. It's just what's profitable.
cloudjacker 11y ago
I like the insight into the Credit Default Swap market, interest rates and debt balances that's been very useful to me
fweespee_ch 11y ago
> About 2 years ago the tenor of the publications shifted from libertarian to more and more reactionary (bordering on proto-fascist). When I skip the articles nowdays, I think that the authors have no problem with authoritarianism, as long as taxes are reduced and social welfare is gutted (it is obviously not stated as such, but most opinion-pieces speak for themself). I think the problem with this is their ideological goals are to starve the beast and play at being antiestablishment. They were always unscrupulous about the how and have been since at least 2011 when I first noticed they existed. I honestly don't think the tone has changed substantially.
carsongross 11y ago
I think what you are noticing is a broader shift in the libertarian community: people are noticing that an open libertarian society isn't possible since most people aren't libertarians but would like the material benefits that more libertarianish societies offer. Many libertarians I know are now "nationalist libertarians", opposed to large scale immigration, increasingly skeptical of international free trade, and so on. A lot of ex-Ron Paul types are now Trump supporters. To me, this seems like the political/intellectual story of our time. It isn't happening in the mainstream media, of course, because libertarianism has never had the high ground there: you see it in the blogs and, of course, in the chans & reddit.
- UK-AL 11y ago
  I don't how you can be libertarian and be opposed to free trade and immigration.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
tryitnow 11y ago
This is a common trend among more ardent libertarians. I think it's due to a lot of libertarian predictions about the post-recession stimulus not coming true. I know, I was one of those libertarians who though Obama was going to usher in a period of high inflation-driven growth. I was completely, absolutely, and astoundingly wrong. My response was to update my beliefs, but some people's response to their theories being proven incorrect by reality is to become rigidly authoritarian. "If reality doesn't conform to my worldview, I will make it conform!" Remember the Communists, like modern libertarians, originally had a stateless society as their goal. I think this is what happened with ZH and many other libertarian leaning sites.

by maze-le 11y ago

alistproducer2 11y ago

My thoughts exactly. I was a daily reader of ZH going back to its very beginning. The tone of it's articles and comments became unbearable ~2011 so now I only go there a couple times a year out of nostalgia.

21 11y ago
I was IP banned from that site around 2011 because I left a comment saying that if you did what the site was preaching in the previous two years (2009-2011), meaning shorting the market because the second collapse is just around the corner, you would have lost a ton of money.

alistproducer2 11y ago

>I think that the authors have no problem with authoritarianism Like any conspiracy site, it's going to attract people who share a view of the world in which everything must be orchestrated, controlled - a reason for all things. Randomness has no place in the mind of a conspiracy theorist. The order provided by conspiracies comfort the conspiracy theorist: paradoxically making the world feel safer, more ordered while simultaneously believing that evil people have devoted their lives to ruining yours. If you think about it, such a psychology is naturally authoritarian-leaning. Such a mind yearns for stability, order and control.

tomp 11y ago
So, all people who were saying that NSA is spying on the whole internet (before Snowden, that was the conspiracy) were secretly authoritarian?!
- tptacek 11y ago
  No, the spying the NSA does on the Internet falls more into the category of "worst kept secrets" than "conspiracy theories".
  - tomp 11y ago
    You could say that about all conspiracy theories, especially those that have since come true.
    - tptacek 11y ago
      So what? That's not analysis, it's numerology. Just because some things are true doesn't mean all theories are equally deserving of dignity. But the notion that the USG was monitoring the Internet was entirely deserving of dignity: * It's their job * The software security industry is full of people who used to hack professionally for them * There'd been a major news story roughly every other year since the 1990s Echelon thing about NSA dragnet surveillance There are still things people say about NSA that have the tenor of conspiracy theories --- some of them being things Snowden actually said! --- and you might be able to make observations about the character of the people who believe those things (I don't know, that was the other commenter's point). But the basic outline of what NSA is doing with the Internet is not a conspiracy theory.
      - saalweachter 11y ago
        Another important point-- once you get into the conspiracy theory mindset, it's not so much that a conspiracy or some conspiracies happen. There's a tendency to believe that all conspiracies are true, even the contradictory ones. Your average conspiracy theorist doesn't just believe the NSA is spying on Americans [they better be spying on non-Americans; we taxpayers are paying them a lot of money to do so] or that Putin has had a few guys killed. Your average conspiracy theorist believes that the Moon landing was faked, JFK was assassinated by a coordinated effort of at least three different groups, there are cures to cancer and all other diseases being kept secret by corporations and/or the gov'ment, Hitler is still alive, aliens have visited the Earth, are living here, and have secret treaties with various states, the UN has real power, various diseases [eg, HIV] are man-made, and various biblical artifacts have been found and kept secret. You rarely find a conspiracy theorist who believes one crazy thing, it's almost all or nothing. It's this weird credulity veiled as skepticism for the establishment

TorKlingberg 11y ago

Could you link to a couple of examples? I am not interested enough to go searching. I did find an anti-vaxxer piece on the frontpage, which did not exactly inspire trust: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-04-28/why-our-children-should-hate-us-read-lance-simmens-article-banned-huffington-post http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-04-28/why-our-children-sh...

tomp 11y ago
> Some very, very powerful and influential people are terrified of it and are doing everything they can to make sure it never sees the light of day. Which makes me infinitely more curious. Which is quite solid logic - why would "they" want to ban something unless they're afraid of it?
- pjc50 11y ago
  Maybe they're afraid of it because it's genuinely misleading and dangerous to public health? Just because innocent people are sometimes harassed by the authorities does not mean you can use harrasment by authorities as evidence that someone's actually in the right.
tcoppi 11y ago
They post things like this all the time. I would take it not as them editorially advocating the position, but rather getting information otherwise censored by other media out there. Sometimes the information is not reported for good reason, such as this. You need a very good BS and relevancy filter to find the few nuggets of gold that are put out maybe a few times a year by ZH.
- themartorana 11y ago
  An "even a broken clock is right twice a day" method of viewing a content publication is a funny way of explaining away dangerous "journalism" for a couple of stuck clock hands.
  - 11y ago

actionwords 11y ago

About 2 years ago the tenor of the publications shifted from libertarian to more and more reactionary (bordering on proto-fascist). When I skip the articles nowdays, I think that the authors have no problem with authoritarianism, as long as taxes are reduced and social welfare is gutted Clearly you don't realize that fascists would increase taxes AND social welfare.

natrius 11y ago

In a world of centralized media, the incentives led outlets to promote viewpoints supported by the elite and omit viewpoints that would offend them. Their access to viewers, leads and advertising dollars required the party line product we all recognize. In a world of decentralized media, you can't get readers to keep coming back if you're just another mainstream news source. Instead, you have to choose a niche viewpoint and convince readers that your outlet is the only place they can get information about it. This results in a competition between niche news outlets to present as extreme a viewpoint as their readers will tolerate, or create new viewpoints that can attract an audience. The world is being radicalized by capital. Dividing us is profitable.

spectrum1234 11y ago
"The world is being radicalized by capital. Dividing us is profitable." Maybe, but let's never forget centralized media is much, much worse. Many seem to forget this unfortunately. Choice is always a good thing.
danielweber 11y ago
The simpler, less sinister explanation, is that normal moderate viewpoints do not pay the bills, but extreme and sensational viewpoints -- whatever the flavor -- do.
- maze-le 11y ago
  There is truth in that, its a sad state of affairs...
- natrius 11y ago
  That's exactly what I'm saying. It's not a conspiracy. It's just what's profitable.

cloudjacker 11y ago

I like the insight into the Credit Default Swap market, interest rates and debt balances that's been very useful to me

fweespee_ch 11y ago

> About 2 years ago the tenor of the publications shifted from libertarian to more and more reactionary (bordering on proto-fascist). When I skip the articles nowdays, I think that the authors have no problem with authoritarianism, as long as taxes are reduced and social welfare is gutted (it is obviously not stated as such, but most opinion-pieces speak for themself). I think the problem with this is their ideological goals are to starve the beast and play at being antiestablishment. They were always unscrupulous about the how and have been since at least 2011 when I first noticed they existed. I honestly don't think the tone has changed substantially.

carsongross 11y ago

I think what you are noticing is a broader shift in the libertarian community: people are noticing that an open libertarian society isn't possible since most people aren't libertarians but would like the material benefits that more libertarianish societies offer. Many libertarians I know are now "nationalist libertarians", opposed to large scale immigration, increasingly skeptical of international free trade, and so on. A lot of ex-Ron Paul types are now Trump supporters. To me, this seems like the political/intellectual story of our time. It isn't happening in the mainstream media, of course, because libertarianism has never had the high ground there: you see it in the blogs and, of course, in the chans & reddit.

UK-AL 11y ago
I don't how you can be libertarian and be opposed to free trade and immigration.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

tryitnow 11y ago

This is a common trend among more ardent libertarians. I think it's due to a lot of libertarian predictions about the post-recession stimulus not coming true. I know, I was one of those libertarians who though Obama was going to usher in a period of high inflation-driven growth. I was completely, absolutely, and astoundingly wrong. My response was to update my beliefs, but some people's response to their theories being proven incorrect by reality is to become rigidly authoritarian. "If reality doesn't conform to my worldview, I will make it conform!" Remember the Communists, like modern libertarians, originally had a stateless society as their goal. I think this is what happened with ZH and many other libertarian leaning sites.