4 ms·

Glenn Greenwald spends too much time on Twitter railing imho when that time could gave been spent doing Journalism. It was the in depth journalism that he orig

by kodz4 8y ago

Glenn Greenwald spends too much time on Twitter railing imho when that time could gave been spent doing Journalism. It was the in depth journalism that he originally did that made Snowden contact him. Not the current 75 tweets a day on everything under the sun. Ideally journalists need to get off Twitter. It's a waste of their time. Especially the pointless fact checking of bullshit. I'd rather see and PAY for one Spotlight story a year than 24x7x365 days of tweeting.

_Codemonkeyism 8y ago
Last time I've said this, I got a huge karma hit, but I'd say it again: Greenwald is a political activist not a journalist. I had huge expectations in investigative journalism with The Intercept, but for me it failed. But it looks like it wants to stay that course, with "said it could no longer afford its research team, and was eliminating those jobs as part of a 4 percent cut in its workforce." +100 for "I'd rather see and PAY for one Spotlight story a year than 24x7x365 days of tweeting"
DyslexicAtheist 8y ago
The Intercept has become a pretty large organization that goes well beyond the vision (and personal views) of Greenwald. GG has no doubt upset a lot of powerful people who want to see him fall professionally (or even worse). It's not surprising that he has his hands full on twitter fending off attacks. I don't think GG or his staff are only on Twitter in order to find scoops and topics for regurgitation (or that twitter is automatically a problem affecting the magazines output). The Drone Papers[1] released in 2015 by Jeremy Scahill were an outstanding piece of writing. In 2016 they revealed[2] that a AT&T site in NYC hosts a secret NSA surveillance site It is probably hard to create such hits on a regular basis especially when their new content will always be judged on their previous (first) successes I don't see the quality of their reporting being reduced though, but fwiw they did expand into a more mainstream political sphere which isn't always about tech-conspiracies (NSA, Snowden, Drone-papers) and so they have to compete with other outlets that cover the same stuff. If they have become less edgy (more "blah") than they used to be maybe less funding will be good for them and they'll find their roots again. [1] https://theintercept.com/drone-papers/ https://theintercept.com/drone-papers/ [2] https://theintercept.com/2016/11/16/the-nsas-spy-hub-in-new-york-hidden-in-plain-sight/ https://theintercept.com/2016/11/16/the-nsas-spy-hub-in-new-...
- Scipio_Afri 8y ago
  I'm a bit confused, if NSA mission is to be able to spy on other counties' military operations, why wouldn't that include the ability to intercept communications coming from outside the country or information going out from suspected spys? What I'm saying is the facility in NYC is not at all surprising, there are a ton of fiber cables that come in from overseas into NYC. Anyone with half a brain about internet infrastructure and has ever read any of the mission directives or legal authorities of NSA will realize exactly what they're doing there. That is looking at cyber operations/attacks coming into the country and looking for covert communications from people who are trying to influence our government for their foreign government's military or economic benefit. Also, for what it is worth, NSA is also pretty important in ensuring weapons proliferation and military equipment movements (which helps indicate possibly wars, covert actions or invasions) using measurements of various types to track nuclear, biological and other weapons. That is fairly essential for upholding and enforcing international laws and treaties. Finally I'm also confused when people say "domestic" tracking. Basically the NSA had databases they could look at if given legal authority to do so (meaning they think someone is a spy and show evidence of that) to see interactions between a person and other people (who they call, how often, where their phone is, etc). Apparently it seems now they just have to request or, like anyone else, buy that data from the telecoms instead of it being in house.
  - DyslexicAtheist 8y ago
    > Anyone with half a brain about internet infrastructure and has ever read any of the mission directives or legal authorities of NSA will realize exactly what they're doing there. It's a good thing when long running rumors can be corroborated, so labeling this as non-info is somewhat unfair. News in Europe of cell towers listening-in on national parliaments discussion or phones being directly targeted, make scary headlines outside in Europe or anywhere outside US. This story drove home the same message to Americans: that it's not just something the NSA does overseas to "keep us save". The story also made sense since it continued the established narrative from previously published Snowden leaks in The Intercept. > NSA is also pretty important in ensuring weapons proliferation and military equipment movements (which helps indicate possibly wars, covert actions or invasions) using measurements of various types to track nuclear, biological and other weapons as a non US citizen, this deeply terrifies me (even without the current geo-policial climate). edit: reduce waffle
forinti 8y ago
IMHO, Greenwald is producing the best journalism in Brazil at the moment. Unfortunately, most of what is produced in Brazil is just the opinion of the journalist or, worse, his boss's. In fact, a local journalist once admitted the only thing he ever read was his own paper and nobody thought anything of it (Paulo Sant'Ana from Zero Hora). If you think about it, the big names in Brazil, like the recently deceased Boechat or Reinaldo Azevedo, spend all day in different medias. Where would they get the time to investigate anything?
- HillRat 8y ago
  I’m overall no fan of GG, but it seems (speaking as an outsider) he had the goods on Bolsonaro before the election, and his husband is now in the literal firing line as a gay, liberal Congressman in a time of rising right-wing violence. I’m not sure Greenwald has been effective or even all that salutary in regards to US politics and policies, but he might just be the journalist Brazil needs now.
  - objektif 8y ago
    Hold on why would anyone not be a fan of GG. Do you know anything that I should as well?
ReptileMan 8y ago
He also took a very hard stand in the culture war, where for his business being neutral would have been probably better in the long-ish term.
- AlexCoventry 8y ago
  What was his stand, there?
  - ReptileMan 8y ago
    The intercept started on laser focus on privacy and state surveillance and turned into full blown sj outlet later on. And that is crowded space lately. So it is hard to get good ROI.
    - objektif 8y ago
      You also might get a better return for your time on TD than HN.
      - ReptileMan 8y ago
        Personal attack. Mediocre. Anyway the intercept went from having interesting articles you can only read there to having run off the mill articles that you can read literally anywhere else. So you have no reason to read there. A hard hitting report about eric prince could be read only in the intercept. If you want to write hot takes about how terrible Trump or Bolsonaro is you compete with literally every other big outlet there is. And they lost.
      - MockObject 8y ago
        What's TD?
        ReptileMan 8y ago
        /r/the_donald
sz4kerto 8y ago
We have something similar in Hungary -- a group of journalists living off donations who produce a few big stories a year. It's not an easy way of making a living.
- Tsubasachan 8y ago
  Well its difficult making money with writing things people don't want to hear. How many people in the US or Hungary want to read about everything that is wrong in the country? Isn't it much easier to believe that everything is great?
  - jkestner 8y ago
    Not exactly. The US media is happy to sell us bad news that reinforces our own sense of moral superiority. What we don't like is non-partisan news that challenges it.
watwut 8y ago
Greenwald is just one journalist among multiple intercept journalists. He is not leading or managing the group.
balladeer 8y ago
Is there a tool that gives the average daily/weekly tweeting frequency of an account for last few months or just overall? I often have to unfollow already followed twitter accounts that, even though they are interesting, tweet too much effectively drowning other accounts' tweets which are not that aggressive and I end up unfollowing them. I wish there was a tool that I can decide right in the beginning whether they tweet a lot - find such accounts easily among the ones I follow. (I check Twitter occasionally - once or twice in a day or 2-3 days)
- badideaprojects 8y ago
  You might like this tool https://github.com/x0rz/tweets_analyzer https://github.com/x0rz/tweets_analyzer Primarily designed with OSINT in mind but covers tweet frequency, among other functions: - Average tweet activity, by hour and by day of the week - Timezone and language set for the Twitter interface - Sources used (mobile application, web browser, ...) - Geolocations - Most used hashtags, most retweeted users and most mentioned users - Friends analysis based on most frequent timezones/languages
danso 8y ago
I remember Greenwald being known for being an outspoken, opinionated writer. Maybe his Twitter presence today projects a different image than his blogging presence back in the day. But I was under the impression that Greenwald tendency of "railing" about things, like the Iraq War, was what made Snowden aware and trusting of Greenwald: https://thetyee.ca/Books/2014/05/30/No-Place-to-Hide/ https://thetyee.ca/Books/2014/05/30/No-Place-to-Hide/ > In my own exploration of the blogosphere over a decade ago, I soon ran across Glenn Greenwald. In some ways he seemed to break the rules of writing online: he wrote long blog posts composed of long sentences in long paragraphs. His blocks of text did not welcome, but I read them anyway. So did thousands of others. > In the process of blogging, Greenwald helped form a community of interest, just as opposing communities formed to support Bush and his policies. In forming his community, Greenwald eventually drew the attention of a young man who’d been mostly hanging out in techie communities: Edward Snowden.
- kodz4 8y ago
  Long blog posts requires more thought and work than his current tweeting. The kind that you usually find in Books in a Library. Twitter content is what you find in the garbage bins of writers. I don't think Twitter has helped Greenwald evolve into something better.
objektif 8y ago
I 100% disagree with you. There are not many influential people doing what ge is doing in twitter. I would rather see him post on twitter and reach out to more people than release articles that only few read.
harry8 8y ago
It's been a while since I read Glenn. I'm not remotely left but usually find him a good read, well reasoned and well argued from evidence. From there you can disagree or not as you choose. So given this comment I thought I'd read his twitter feed. Holy s&t! Wow. So a bunch of senior US politicians have been telling lies to try and start a war in Venezuela and most of the US media has been parroting those lies without any checking or indeed re-enforcing the lies with their own lies, in CNN's case. The New York Times finally got off their backsides and called it. Wow. Yeah write that Glenn, tweet it too. And while you're at it shame the hell out of those people impersonating journalists who did that and have not retracted it as being entirely* false. Wow. Yeah so this is why people hate on Glenn. He's good and that's super inconvenient for the corrupt. He's actually really good. I wish there was someone less leftist as good as he is. I really do. But yeah, read Glenn, disagree with him by all means, I do, often. But read, he has something to say about things you should probably know and be thinking about.

by kodz4 8y ago

_Codemonkeyism 8y ago

Last time I've said this, I got a huge karma hit, but I'd say it again: Greenwald is a political activist not a journalist. I had huge expectations in investigative journalism with The Intercept, but for me it failed. But it looks like it wants to stay that course, with "said it could no longer afford its research team, and was eliminating those jobs as part of a 4 percent cut in its workforce." +100 for "I'd rather see and PAY for one Spotlight story a year than 24x7x365 days of tweeting"

DyslexicAtheist 8y ago

The Intercept has become a pretty large organization that goes well beyond the vision (and personal views) of Greenwald. GG has no doubt upset a lot of powerful people who want to see him fall professionally (or even worse). It's not surprising that he has his hands full on twitter fending off attacks. I don't think GG or his staff are only on Twitter in order to find scoops and topics for regurgitation (or that twitter is automatically a problem affecting the magazines output). The Drone Papers[1] released in 2015 by Jeremy Scahill were an outstanding piece of writing. In 2016 they revealed[2] that a AT&T site in NYC hosts a secret NSA surveillance site It is probably hard to create such hits on a regular basis especially when their new content will always be judged on their previous (first) successes I don't see the quality of their reporting being reduced though, but fwiw they did expand into a more mainstream political sphere which isn't always about tech-conspiracies (NSA, Snowden, Drone-papers) and so they have to compete with other outlets that cover the same stuff. If they have become less edgy (more "blah") than they used to be maybe less funding will be good for them and they'll find their roots again. [1] https://theintercept.com/drone-papers/ https://theintercept.com/drone-papers/ [2] https://theintercept.com/2016/11/16/the-nsas-spy-hub-in-new-york-hidden-in-plain-sight/ https://theintercept.com/2016/11/16/the-nsas-spy-hub-in-new-...

Scipio_Afri 8y ago
I'm a bit confused, if NSA mission is to be able to spy on other counties' military operations, why wouldn't that include the ability to intercept communications coming from outside the country or information going out from suspected spys? What I'm saying is the facility in NYC is not at all surprising, there are a ton of fiber cables that come in from overseas into NYC. Anyone with half a brain about internet infrastructure and has ever read any of the mission directives or legal authorities of NSA will realize exactly what they're doing there. That is looking at cyber operations/attacks coming into the country and looking for covert communications from people who are trying to influence our government for their foreign government's military or economic benefit. Also, for what it is worth, NSA is also pretty important in ensuring weapons proliferation and military equipment movements (which helps indicate possibly wars, covert actions or invasions) using measurements of various types to track nuclear, biological and other weapons. That is fairly essential for upholding and enforcing international laws and treaties. Finally I'm also confused when people say "domestic" tracking. Basically the NSA had databases they could look at if given legal authority to do so (meaning they think someone is a spy and show evidence of that) to see interactions between a person and other people (who they call, how often, where their phone is, etc). Apparently it seems now they just have to request or, like anyone else, buy that data from the telecoms instead of it being in house.
- DyslexicAtheist 8y ago
  > Anyone with half a brain about internet infrastructure and has ever read any of the mission directives or legal authorities of NSA will realize exactly what they're doing there. It's a good thing when long running rumors can be corroborated, so labeling this as non-info is somewhat unfair. News in Europe of cell towers listening-in on national parliaments discussion or phones being directly targeted, make scary headlines outside in Europe or anywhere outside US. This story drove home the same message to Americans: that it's not just something the NSA does overseas to "keep us save". The story also made sense since it continued the established narrative from previously published Snowden leaks in The Intercept. > NSA is also pretty important in ensuring weapons proliferation and military equipment movements (which helps indicate possibly wars, covert actions or invasions) using measurements of various types to track nuclear, biological and other weapons as a non US citizen, this deeply terrifies me (even without the current geo-policial climate). edit: reduce waffle

forinti 8y ago

IMHO, Greenwald is producing the best journalism in Brazil at the moment. Unfortunately, most of what is produced in Brazil is just the opinion of the journalist or, worse, his boss's. In fact, a local journalist once admitted the only thing he ever read was his own paper and nobody thought anything of it (Paulo Sant'Ana from Zero Hora). If you think about it, the big names in Brazil, like the recently deceased Boechat or Reinaldo Azevedo, spend all day in different medias. Where would they get the time to investigate anything?

HillRat 8y ago
I’m overall no fan of GG, but it seems (speaking as an outsider) he had the goods on Bolsonaro before the election, and his husband is now in the literal firing line as a gay, liberal Congressman in a time of rising right-wing violence. I’m not sure Greenwald has been effective or even all that salutary in regards to US politics and policies, but he might just be the journalist Brazil needs now.
- objektif 8y ago
  Hold on why would anyone not be a fan of GG. Do you know anything that I should as well?

ReptileMan 8y ago

He also took a very hard stand in the culture war, where for his business being neutral would have been probably better in the long-ish term.

AlexCoventry 8y ago
What was his stand, there?
- ReptileMan 8y ago
  The intercept started on laser focus on privacy and state surveillance and turned into full blown sj outlet later on. And that is crowded space lately. So it is hard to get good ROI.
  - objektif 8y ago
    You also might get a better return for your time on TD than HN.
    - ReptileMan 8y ago
      Personal attack. Mediocre. Anyway the intercept went from having interesting articles you can only read there to having run off the mill articles that you can read literally anywhere else. So you have no reason to read there. A hard hitting report about eric prince could be read only in the intercept. If you want to write hot takes about how terrible Trump or Bolsonaro is you compete with literally every other big outlet there is. And they lost.
    - MockObject 8y ago
      What's TD?
      - ReptileMan 8y ago
        /r/the_donald

sz4kerto 8y ago

We have something similar in Hungary -- a group of journalists living off donations who produce a few big stories a year. It's not an easy way of making a living.

Tsubasachan 8y ago
Well its difficult making money with writing things people don't want to hear. How many people in the US or Hungary want to read about everything that is wrong in the country? Isn't it much easier to believe that everything is great?
- jkestner 8y ago
  Not exactly. The US media is happy to sell us bad news that reinforces our own sense of moral superiority. What we don't like is non-partisan news that challenges it.

watwut 8y ago

Greenwald is just one journalist among multiple intercept journalists. He is not leading or managing the group.

balladeer 8y ago

Is there a tool that gives the average daily/weekly tweeting frequency of an account for last few months or just overall? I often have to unfollow already followed twitter accounts that, even though they are interesting, tweet too much effectively drowning other accounts' tweets which are not that aggressive and I end up unfollowing them. I wish there was a tool that I can decide right in the beginning whether they tweet a lot - find such accounts easily among the ones I follow. (I check Twitter occasionally - once or twice in a day or 2-3 days)

badideaprojects 8y ago
You might like this tool https://github.com/x0rz/tweets_analyzer https://github.com/x0rz/tweets_analyzer Primarily designed with OSINT in mind but covers tweet frequency, among other functions: - Average tweet activity, by hour and by day of the week - Timezone and language set for the Twitter interface - Sources used (mobile application, web browser, ...) - Geolocations - Most used hashtags, most retweeted users and most mentioned users - Friends analysis based on most frequent timezones/languages

danso 8y ago

I remember Greenwald being known for being an outspoken, opinionated writer. Maybe his Twitter presence today projects a different image than his blogging presence back in the day. But I was under the impression that Greenwald tendency of "railing" about things, like the Iraq War, was what made Snowden aware and trusting of Greenwald: https://thetyee.ca/Books/2014/05/30/No-Place-to-Hide/ https://thetyee.ca/Books/2014/05/30/No-Place-to-Hide/ > In my own exploration of the blogosphere over a decade ago, I soon ran across Glenn Greenwald. In some ways he seemed to break the rules of writing online: he wrote long blog posts composed of long sentences in long paragraphs. His blocks of text did not welcome, but I read them anyway. So did thousands of others. > In the process of blogging, Greenwald helped form a community of interest, just as opposing communities formed to support Bush and his policies. In forming his community, Greenwald eventually drew the attention of a young man who’d been mostly hanging out in techie communities: Edward Snowden.

kodz4 8y ago
Long blog posts requires more thought and work than his current tweeting. The kind that you usually find in Books in a Library. Twitter content is what you find in the garbage bins of writers. I don't think Twitter has helped Greenwald evolve into something better.

objektif 8y ago

I 100% disagree with you. There are not many influential people doing what ge is doing in twitter. I would rather see him post on twitter and reach out to more people than release articles that only few read.

harry8 8y ago

It's been a while since I read Glenn. I'm not remotely left but usually find him a good read, well reasoned and well argued from evidence. From there you can disagree or not as you choose. So given this comment I thought I'd read his twitter feed. Holy s&t! Wow. So a bunch of senior US politicians have been telling lies to try and start a war in Venezuela and most of the US media has been parroting those lies without any checking or indeed re-enforcing the lies with their own lies, in CNN's case. The New York Times finally got off their backsides and called it. Wow. Yeah write that Glenn, tweet it too. And while you're at it shame the hell out of those people impersonating journalists who did that and have not retracted it as being entirely* false. Wow. Yeah so this is why people hate on Glenn. He's good and that's super inconvenient for the corrupt. He's actually really good. I wish there was someone less leftist as good as he is. I really do. But yeah, read Glenn, disagree with him by all means, I do, often. But read, he has something to say about things you should probably know and be thinking about.