4 ms·

It's so incredibly annoying that every time there's a news article about wikileaks people start crying about its bias and Russian spies. Even if Satan himself f

It's so incredibly annoying that every time there's a news article about wikileaks people start crying about its bias and Russian spies. Even if Satan himself feeds them info, so what? What matters is the truthfulness of their leaks. It seem to me like a lot of people avoid attacking the verasity of the leaks themselves but focus only on the 'Putin connection', which is of course a much easier thing to do. Well, hey, it's modern world politics, where it's not the objective truth that really matters or the argumentation, it's a 'who can shout the loudest' contest instead.

archagon 9y ago
No, screw that approach. Truth is not just a collection of facts; it's also the point cloud that the facts create. Even if your information is 100% accurate, you can still generate incredibly potent misinformation by selectively releasing some facts and retaining others. It's bias laundering, and it creates propaganda that's substantially more difficult to discredit than the old-school, lie-based kind. We should really know better, but I suppose it plays to our human weaknesses. I say that every time WikiLeaks comes up, "Assange should not be trusted" needs to be the top comment. No different than a "view at your own discretion" label.
- vim_wannabe 9y ago
  Out of interest: who could be trusted with releasing accurate facts but not withholding any? The 17 intelligence agencies? 97% of scientists?
  - archagon 9y ago
    > The 17 intelligence agencies? Probably not. > 97% of scientists? Probably yes. Also, news organizations with transparency and decades-old reputations, e.g. the BBC. But certainly not a secretive <s>anarchist</s> libertarian organization with an egomaniac leader[1] and questionable political connections. [1]: https://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n05/andrew-ohagan/ghosting https://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n05/andrew-ohagan/ghosting
    - moneytalks 9y ago
      BBC is paid for by the British government, that is, politicians or oversight orgs that report to politicians. For-profit news agencies are simply delivery mechanisms for advertisements run by mostly large conglomerate corps. News happens to be their niche to get eyeballs on the advertisements that pays the bills -- porn tubes and cnn have more in common than we'd like to accept. Additionally to the extent they need licenses for the public airwaves or access to governmental officials, they are influenced by those. Decades-old reputation matters nothing compared to the current leadership being beholden to those who hold the pursestrings. The best that can be hoped for is the powers influencing the news somehow balance each other out enough for a modicum of truth to leak through.
      - archagon 9y ago
        Bias does not necessarily follow from "paid for by the... government", "run by mostly large conglomerate corps", and "need licenses for the public airwaves". Most everything good is paid for by someone or some group; journalists don't have the means to do their reporting for free. Ultimately you have to use your own judgement, but if your preferred news organizations have a history of hiring honest and reputable journalists and providing unbiased coverage (especially if it targets institutions of power) then I think heuristically you can leave them in your "trusted source" folder. In the worst case scenario, I suppose you can just follow your favorite journalists and rely on personal trust and reputation.
      - youngtaff 9y ago
        BBC is not paid for by the British Government, it's paid for by the license fee, essentially a tax on everyone that has a TV That said, the BBC very much represents "the establishment" views.
      - dogma1138 9y ago
        They've also spent millions of tax payer money to keep government reports about BBC reporting bias secret from the public.
esrauch 9y ago
I don't know, I think if there is a bias or we only read things released by Russian spies then it seems really important to take that into account If every single person's emails are at least controversial then it just means you are going to be a mob chasing anyone that was targeted, unrelated to if they are better or worse than everyone else (and it seems like any email is damning, pizzeria-thank-you emails are enough to cause people to think there is a vast child trafficking conspiracy and literally shoot up the place). If it was an unbiased sample it is fine to catch a random subset and set examples of them, but if you have a biased sample then you might be actually leading to concentration of power in whoever has the least scruples in hacking and leaking opposition emails if you aren't careful to take the sample bias into account.
nyxtom 9y ago
I take issue with wikileaks because Assange has explicitly stated himself that his goal is to inflict the maximum amount of damage through headline manipulation or hyperbole/click-baiting; leave it to the users to actually take a look at the content of the leaks to decide for themselves. Given this, the organization appears to be no better than any other sensational manipulative news organization, so I highly question their methods.

archagon 9y ago

No, screw that approach. Truth is not just a collection of facts; it's also the point cloud that the facts create. Even if your information is 100% accurate, you can still generate incredibly potent misinformation by selectively releasing some facts and retaining others. It's bias laundering, and it creates propaganda that's substantially more difficult to discredit than the old-school, lie-based kind. We should really know better, but I suppose it plays to our human weaknesses. I say that every time WikiLeaks comes up, "Assange should not be trusted" needs to be the top comment. No different than a "view at your own discretion" label.

vim_wannabe 9y ago
Out of interest: who could be trusted with releasing accurate facts but not withholding any? The 17 intelligence agencies? 97% of scientists?
- archagon 9y ago
  > The 17 intelligence agencies? Probably not. > 97% of scientists? Probably yes. Also, news organizations with transparency and decades-old reputations, e.g. the BBC. But certainly not a secretive <s>anarchist</s> libertarian organization with an egomaniac leader[1] and questionable political connections. [1]: https://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n05/andrew-ohagan/ghosting https://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n05/andrew-ohagan/ghosting
  - moneytalks 9y ago
    BBC is paid for by the British government, that is, politicians or oversight orgs that report to politicians. For-profit news agencies are simply delivery mechanisms for advertisements run by mostly large conglomerate corps. News happens to be their niche to get eyeballs on the advertisements that pays the bills -- porn tubes and cnn have more in common than we'd like to accept. Additionally to the extent they need licenses for the public airwaves or access to governmental officials, they are influenced by those. Decades-old reputation matters nothing compared to the current leadership being beholden to those who hold the pursestrings. The best that can be hoped for is the powers influencing the news somehow balance each other out enough for a modicum of truth to leak through.
    - archagon 9y ago
      Bias does not necessarily follow from "paid for by the... government", "run by mostly large conglomerate corps", and "need licenses for the public airwaves". Most everything good is paid for by someone or some group; journalists don't have the means to do their reporting for free. Ultimately you have to use your own judgement, but if your preferred news organizations have a history of hiring honest and reputable journalists and providing unbiased coverage (especially if it targets institutions of power) then I think heuristically you can leave them in your "trusted source" folder. In the worst case scenario, I suppose you can just follow your favorite journalists and rely on personal trust and reputation.
    - youngtaff 9y ago
      BBC is not paid for by the British Government, it's paid for by the license fee, essentially a tax on everyone that has a TV That said, the BBC very much represents "the establishment" views.
    - dogma1138 9y ago
      They've also spent millions of tax payer money to keep government reports about BBC reporting bias secret from the public.

esrauch 9y ago

I don't know, I think if there is a bias or we only read things released by Russian spies then it seems really important to take that into account If every single person's emails are at least controversial then it just means you are going to be a mob chasing anyone that was targeted, unrelated to if they are better or worse than everyone else (and it seems like any email is damning, pizzeria-thank-you emails are enough to cause people to think there is a vast child trafficking conspiracy and literally shoot up the place). If it was an unbiased sample it is fine to catch a random subset and set examples of them, but if you have a biased sample then you might be actually leading to concentration of power in whoever has the least scruples in hacking and leaking opposition emails if you aren't careful to take the sample bias into account.

nyxtom 9y ago

I take issue with wikileaks because Assange has explicitly stated himself that his goal is to inflict the maximum amount of damage through headline manipulation or hyperbole/click-baiting; leave it to the users to actually take a look at the content of the leaks to decide for themselves. Given this, the organization appears to be no better than any other sensational manipulative news organization, so I highly question their methods.