10 ms·

> The Post publishes a lot of disreputable trash that's outright false or unproven, but more and more often, it seems that they release primary sources of info

by tomp 6y ago

> The Post publishes a lot of disreputable trash that's outright false or unproven, but more and more often, it seems that they release primary sources of information (especially videos) much earlier than other news outlets will, if the other news outlets do so at all. Interesting... after reading this, I immediately thought: same as Zero Hedge (also often criticised). But then again, that shouldn't be a surprise - basically a lower bar (on accuracy) should result both in lower reaction time, and in more false positives. A comment to a sibling comment: I personally find lower time-to-publish immensely valuable - I prefer to assess the accuracy of news stories myself (usually considering the original source and how aligned their interests are with the published information), and I find almost no value in the supposedly "trustworthy" media because they're not actually trustworthy to me (besides the obvious political bias, there's also plenty of high-profile non-culture-wars fake news, e.g. Iraqi WMD, Bloomberg's China spying debacle, the current (non-)coverage of Assange, ...). If there's anything I've learned in the past 10 or so years, is that the "experts" are barely any better than myself at discerning what's true or not, and much less trustworthy.

olivermarks 6y ago
Yikes - I've found Zerohedge to be scarily accurate over time! Depends on your political allegiances I suppose but my mother taught me when i was kid to always read the financial press - 'follow the money to find out what the b@stards are thinking' was her old line. (she used to work for the UK tory party in the '50's, despised them). ZH is what many city of London and wall street minions read live on their bloomberg terminals, for better or worse... Separately I view Twitter as breaking section 230 free speech regulatory agreements in meddling with what they 'publish'
- droffel 6y ago
  > scarily accurate As the saying goes, Zerohedge has predicted 28 of the last 4 recessions. They have a consistently bearish bias (which rarely seems to play out), and ties to the Russian state, which brings into question the motivations behind their criticisms of the US (not that I'm the biggest fan myself). All of that said, ZH introduced me to a lot of economic literature and concepts I likely wouldn't have been exposed to otherwise. They touch on niche subjects constantly, and I have to give them credit for broadening my understanding of economics in general.
  - bigbubba 6y ago
    ZH proudly flaunts their bearish bias. The name Zero Hedge really says it all. Their motto, 'On a long enough timeline the survival rate for everybody drops to zero', makes this explicit.
    - keiferski 6y ago
      That's a quote from Fight Club and more of a joke than anything, IIRC.
      - bigbubba 6y ago
        They obviously chose it because it fits their worldview. Their lack of originality is beyond the point.
      - olivermarks 6y ago
        Most of the articles are written by 'Tyler Durden', part of the 'fight club' philosophy joke.
        keiferski 6y ago
        Right, so I think looking for a deeper philosophy in the choice of name and tagline is a bit futile. "Tyler Durden" used to be the cool pseudonym to use online circa 2005.
        Dylan16807 6y ago
        Nobody said it was deep. Just that it reflects their attitude.
      - dragonwriter 6y ago
        Fight Club, though, was just fancying up and decontextualizing the first sentence of Milton (EDIT: John Maynard, nor Milton) Keynes famous quote: "In the long run we are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task if, in tempestuous seasons, they can only tell us that when the storm is long past the ocean is flat again." I would be very surprised if a financial news outlet choosing the Fight Club quote did so at random and not specifically because of its predecessor.
- ultrarunner 6y ago
  Can you say more about how this violates 230? That wasn’t my understanding of how the law works, but I could be wrong.
  - olivermarks 6y ago
    https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230 https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230 'Section 230 says that "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider" (47 U.S.C. § 230). In other words, online intermediaries that host or republish speech are protected against a range of laws that might otherwise be used to hold them legally responsible for what others say and do. The protected intermediaries include not only regular Internet Service Providers (ISPs), but also a range of "interactive computer service providers," including basically any online service that publishes third-party content. Though there are important exceptions for certain criminal and intellectual property-based claims, CDA 230 creates a broad protection that has allowed innovation and free speech online to flourish'.
    - timdev2 6y ago
      That doesn't explain what "agreements" you think twitter is "breaking". There's a lot of disinformation about 230 floating around, but as the EFF page points out, it's a broad protection. It isn't at all contingent on them behaving like a common carrier.
      - olivermarks 6y ago
        Section 230 has been a political and legal football all year. Example for Twitter editorializing and cancelling https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=1804a02d-a015-4b94-ae11-776860154802 https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=1804a02d-a015... Ammending S230 Bezos/WashPo '...new legislation would target Section 230, a decades-old portion of law that spares social media sites from being held liable for the posts, photos and videos uploaded to their sites by their users. The proposal would pave the way for steep sanctions on major online platforms if they don’t act to remove a range of illicit content, from child exploitation to terrorism, according to Justice Department officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity Wednesday. The agency also seeks to force tech giants to be more transparent about their content-moderation decisions and more consistent in their enforcement of them, according to a report the department released Wednesday. The move might offer the U.S. government a new avenue to probe and punish companies over allegations of political bias'. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/06/17/doj-barr-section-230/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/06/17/doj-bar...
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > Separately I view Twitter as breaking section 230 free speech regulatory agreements in meddling with what they 'publish' Section 230 was overtly adopted so that platforms would make efforts to censor content that they found to be objectionable; there are no "free speech regulatory agreements" associated with it. It is the only surviving part of a law whose sole and entire purpose was internet censorship, the rest of which was struck down for violating Free Speech protections.
  - olivermarks 6y ago
    https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230 https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230 Twitter (and FB) have crossed the rubicon in editorializing other people's posts with 'fact checks' (sic), shadow bans and public bans. Practically the opposite of the free speech maxim 'I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it' and alarmingly close to totalitarian use of their publishing power.
    - jakelazaroff 6y ago
      Your link supports GP's assertion. There is no rubicon to be crossed. Both the letter and the intent of Section 230 is to allow Twitter and Facebook to moderate however they wish. (Although the fact checks are authored by them, and therefore don't fall under Section 230; Twitter would be liable if they were shown to be defamatory).
      - thu2111 6y ago
        Fact checks on Facebook at least aren't authored by them. They come from third party "fact checkers" of dubious legitimacy.
    - AgentME 6y ago
      Nothing about section 230 says that platforms have to publish what people say, or that they are unable to moderate or editorialize the content: >This legal protection can still hold even if a blogger is aware of the objectionable content or makes editorial judgments.
- ch4s3 6y ago
  > Separately I view Twitter as breaking section 230 free speech regulatory agreements in meddling with what they 'publish' Section 230 isn't an agreement, it's a section of the Communication Decency Act.[1] There is no prohibition on the publisher "meddling", or moderating. Section 230 was specifically carved out to encourage voluntary content moderation on the nascent internet. It states that hosting or republishing someone else's speech does not make you the speaker, even if you moderate. Which is to say that just because Twitter locks down accounts or stops a link from being shared, they still are not the Speaker (legally) of anything their users post. That's it, that basically the whole thing. [1]https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230 https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230
- xadhominemx 6y ago
  What is one example of ZH’s accuracy?
  - TechBro8615 6y ago
    ZeroHedge was one of the first outlets to cover Coronavirus and raise the alarm about it.
  - olivermarks 6y ago
    follow this story posted on ZH today over the next few days https://www.zerohedge.com/political/youll-bury-everyone-involved-bobulinski-recorded-biden-operatives-begging-him-stay-quiet https://www.zerohedge.com/political/youll-bury-everyone-invo... It may be incorrect &/or partisan but you are likely to read these sort of revelations on ZH first for better or worse.
    - xadhominemx 6y ago
      Did you read that link you sent me? It’s a collection of tweets and with a paragraph about QAnon at the end
      - olivermarks 6y ago
        Of course. I think the Bobulinski revelations will be a huge news story eventually. Right now the corporate media are doing their best to ignore it. It's not just 'a collection of tweets with a paragraph about QAnon at the end'. Did you actually read it?
- arthurjj 6y ago
  > 'follow the money to find out what the b@stards are thinking' The slightly less cynical way I think of this is that finance will directly be impacted vs non-finance so news targetted at them is more helpful, or at least not actively harming. In the financial independence community most articles on mainstream sites are considered jokes or to have insufficient detail to actually improve your finances A good non-money example: If you get a chronic disease, reading blogs and forums by people who have the disease is going to me more helpful than whatever a staff writer can do in 2 hours of research
- sk2020 6y ago
  I miss when ZH was an investment blog.
koenigdavidmj 6y ago
ZH was talking about coronavirus way earlier than anyone else, which is bound to happen if you don’t validate as well—sometimes you do strike gold. A comment I saw once about them was “ZH has reported five of the last three catastrophes”.
- duxup 6y ago
  "ZH was talking about coronavirus way earlier than anyone else" I've seen that claim too and found it questionable. Almost every major news outlet that would cover international news I found had some story about coronavirus pretty dang early. It wasn't a breathless story predicting the impact, but they covered it. I feel like most media "media does this" or "didn't do that" is mostly just what passed in front of someone's nose. Purely anecdotal experience of mine was a reddit story ages ago that was "The Media is too busy covering X to cover this story Y." Purely out of curiosity I turned around and flipped on the TV and checked the news channels. The first 3 news channels, 2 were covering Y... but the claims about nobody covering it were constant.
  - selectodude 6y ago
    ZH was saying that it was going to be a catastrophe before China even started lying about how they had it under control.
    - CptFribble 6y ago
      To be fair, almost everything on ZH is predicting catastrophe - ZH is rife with prepper-flavored "this is the big one" reports on things like FEMA operations, rumors of potential false flag attacks, and of course various financial instrument movements. 99% of what ZH says is the end of all things fades into nothingness. ZH is the canonical example of a correct-twice-daily broken clock.
      - humaniania 6y ago
        Exactly this! Thank you. ZeroHedge almost seems to be designed to induce anxiety and spread disinformation.
La1n 6y ago
>I personally find lower time-to-publish immensely valuable I am curious why this is so valuable to you. In my personal life a delay of hours in the news cycle would have no effect. How does it generate value for you?
kemiller 6y ago
Low time to publish has its place, but not if it's presented as truth.
nickysielicki 6y ago
Not-so-fun fact: according to the mods on /r/conservative, submissions from zerohedge are currently banned site-wide. https://old.reddit.com/r/Conservative/comments/jhksrq/do_not_post_the_hunter_biden_video_for_any_reason/g9zu0d9/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Conservative/comments/jhksrq/do_not... It seems to check out: https://old.reddit.com/domain/zerohedge.com/new/ https://old.reddit.com/domain/zerohedge.com/new/
- srtjstjsj 6y ago
  That post is referring to a Hunter Biden revenge porn sex tape. Are other non-anonymous performer) revenge porn sex tapes posted on reddit?
  - nickysielicki 6y ago
    That post is referring to the Hunter Biden situation, but the comment I linked to talks about total bans on certain domains which posted about Hunter Biden, including articles which have nothing to do with Hunter Biden. The sites are banned outright from reddit at the moment. Check the second link -- there hasn't been a submission from zerohedge on any subreddit in over 48 hours.
mcintyre1994 6y ago
This is a really interesting thread to read for me. I remember when I was in school as a dumb teenager watching the Zeitgeist video that was going around then, it’s a bunch of dumb conspiracy theories which if I watched now I’d probably peg as blatantly antisemitic as those things tend to be. Anyway I mention that because during that time I remember always leaning on weird ZeroHedge articles to prove things in dumb arguments. I don’t remember the specifics but it stuck with me enough to completely blacklist ZH when I realised how dumb I was being. It sounds like I probably should take a look at it from a fresh perspective and without that baggage, because it’s obviously not what I remember based on these comments.
motohagiography 6y ago
There's a basic economic characteristic I think fringe media gets right: the cost for them being wrong is almost zero, and the benefit of being right first puts them on par with news orgs with hundreds of millions in budget. If you are a reader playing the fast-story slot machine game, it's just noise until you jackpot. The big question is what is the effect of all that noise over time, and what does it make you deaf to? If the social platforms were just imposing costs on being wrong that would almost be a service, but I get the impression from all the ban stories that they're staffed mostly by people who aren't equipped to be that judicious. The platforms have thrown down their cards and are all in on this election cycle, and by showing what appears to be partisan recklessness, it's going to cost them moral high ground they might have had before all this. The good news is the people reading this forum can build a platform killer in 6-8months, and there's going to be a bunch of balance sheet cash on the sidelines looking for startups to fund. These social platform companies are all just another Friendster waiting to happen.
- rhizome 6y ago
  >If the social platforms were just imposing costs on being wrong that would almost be a service, but I get the impression from all the ban stories that they're staffed mostly by people who aren't equipped to be that judicious The latter sounds like an "intent" argument, that imposing the costs has a quality factor that I'd say just doesn't (or doesn't have to) exist.
unethical_ban 6y ago
>I prefer to assess the accuracy of news stories myself (usually considering the original source and how aligned their interests are with the published information) There's your problem. It's one thing to want the raw data out there if you want it, and more importantly, for others who are smarter than you to analyze it. Same principle with publishing methods and analysis of a scientific paper, or publishing source code you'll never look at to github: The fact that others can see it is important in itself. That said, your comment borders too close to the Trumpian "experts know nothing, we can't trust the fourth estate" mentality. Actually, Trumpians don't know the term 'fourth estate'. Anyway. There is value in having institutions of trust investigate events and curate the story.
einpoklum 6y ago
> because they're not actually trustworthy to me Mainstream US media are not trustworthy, period. Repeated cases of going beyond bias and into simply parroting government or political party claims with no evidentiary basis, merely for influencing public opinion one way or another. Often, one would guess, while fully knowing the claims are baseless. The omission of coverage of various issues also contributes to the 'trust-unworthiness'.
secondcoming 6y ago
ZH is still trying to disprove the Russian links to various novichok poisonings. They don't seem to realise that the rest of the world has kind of forgotten about it. It's definitely got some Russian backing, but there are occasionally some quite good finance-related articles on it too. Just avoid the comment section!

by tomp 6y ago

olivermarks 6y ago

Yikes - I've found Zerohedge to be scarily accurate over time! Depends on your political allegiances I suppose but my mother taught me when i was kid to always read the financial press - 'follow the money to find out what the b@stards are thinking' was her old line. (she used to work for the UK tory party in the '50's, despised them). ZH is what many city of London and wall street minions read live on their bloomberg terminals, for better or worse... Separately I view Twitter as breaking section 230 free speech regulatory agreements in meddling with what they 'publish'

droffel 6y ago
> scarily accurate As the saying goes, Zerohedge has predicted 28 of the last 4 recessions. They have a consistently bearish bias (which rarely seems to play out), and ties to the Russian state, which brings into question the motivations behind their criticisms of the US (not that I'm the biggest fan myself). All of that said, ZH introduced me to a lot of economic literature and concepts I likely wouldn't have been exposed to otherwise. They touch on niche subjects constantly, and I have to give them credit for broadening my understanding of economics in general.
- bigbubba 6y ago
  ZH proudly flaunts their bearish bias. The name Zero Hedge really says it all. Their motto, 'On a long enough timeline the survival rate for everybody drops to zero', makes this explicit.
  - keiferski 6y ago
    That's a quote from Fight Club and more of a joke than anything, IIRC.
    - bigbubba 6y ago
      They obviously chose it because it fits their worldview. Their lack of originality is beyond the point.
    - olivermarks 6y ago
      Most of the articles are written by 'Tyler Durden', part of the 'fight club' philosophy joke.
      - keiferski 6y ago
        Right, so I think looking for a deeper philosophy in the choice of name and tagline is a bit futile. "Tyler Durden" used to be the cool pseudonym to use online circa 2005.
        Dylan16807 6y ago
        Nobody said it was deep. Just that it reflects their attitude.
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      Fight Club, though, was just fancying up and decontextualizing the first sentence of Milton (EDIT: John Maynard, nor Milton) Keynes famous quote: "In the long run we are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task if, in tempestuous seasons, they can only tell us that when the storm is long past the ocean is flat again." I would be very surprised if a financial news outlet choosing the Fight Club quote did so at random and not specifically because of its predecessor.
ultrarunner 6y ago
Can you say more about how this violates 230? That wasn’t my understanding of how the law works, but I could be wrong.
- olivermarks 6y ago
  https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230 https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230 'Section 230 says that "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider" (47 U.S.C. § 230). In other words, online intermediaries that host or republish speech are protected against a range of laws that might otherwise be used to hold them legally responsible for what others say and do. The protected intermediaries include not only regular Internet Service Providers (ISPs), but also a range of "interactive computer service providers," including basically any online service that publishes third-party content. Though there are important exceptions for certain criminal and intellectual property-based claims, CDA 230 creates a broad protection that has allowed innovation and free speech online to flourish'.
  - timdev2 6y ago
    That doesn't explain what "agreements" you think twitter is "breaking". There's a lot of disinformation about 230 floating around, but as the EFF page points out, it's a broad protection. It isn't at all contingent on them behaving like a common carrier.
    - olivermarks 6y ago
      Section 230 has been a political and legal football all year. Example for Twitter editorializing and cancelling https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=1804a02d-a015-4b94-ae11-776860154802 https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=1804a02d-a015... Ammending S230 Bezos/WashPo '...new legislation would target Section 230, a decades-old portion of law that spares social media sites from being held liable for the posts, photos and videos uploaded to their sites by their users. The proposal would pave the way for steep sanctions on major online platforms if they don’t act to remove a range of illicit content, from child exploitation to terrorism, according to Justice Department officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity Wednesday. The agency also seeks to force tech giants to be more transparent about their content-moderation decisions and more consistent in their enforcement of them, according to a report the department released Wednesday. The move might offer the U.S. government a new avenue to probe and punish companies over allegations of political bias'. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/06/17/doj-barr-section-230/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/06/17/doj-bar...
dragonwriter 6y ago
> Separately I view Twitter as breaking section 230 free speech regulatory agreements in meddling with what they 'publish' Section 230 was overtly adopted so that platforms would make efforts to censor content that they found to be objectionable; there are no "free speech regulatory agreements" associated with it. It is the only surviving part of a law whose sole and entire purpose was internet censorship, the rest of which was struck down for violating Free Speech protections.
- olivermarks 6y ago
  https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230 https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230 Twitter (and FB) have crossed the rubicon in editorializing other people's posts with 'fact checks' (sic), shadow bans and public bans. Practically the opposite of the free speech maxim 'I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it' and alarmingly close to totalitarian use of their publishing power.
  - jakelazaroff 6y ago
    Your link supports GP's assertion. There is no rubicon to be crossed. Both the letter and the intent of Section 230 is to allow Twitter and Facebook to moderate however they wish. (Although the fact checks are authored by them, and therefore don't fall under Section 230; Twitter would be liable if they were shown to be defamatory).
    - thu2111 6y ago
      Fact checks on Facebook at least aren't authored by them. They come from third party "fact checkers" of dubious legitimacy.
  - AgentME 6y ago
    Nothing about section 230 says that platforms have to publish what people say, or that they are unable to moderate or editorialize the content: >This legal protection can still hold even if a blogger is aware of the objectionable content or makes editorial judgments.
ch4s3 6y ago
> Separately I view Twitter as breaking section 230 free speech regulatory agreements in meddling with what they 'publish' Section 230 isn't an agreement, it's a section of the Communication Decency Act.[1] There is no prohibition on the publisher "meddling", or moderating. Section 230 was specifically carved out to encourage voluntary content moderation on the nascent internet. It states that hosting or republishing someone else's speech does not make you the speaker, even if you moderate. Which is to say that just because Twitter locks down accounts or stops a link from being shared, they still are not the Speaker (legally) of anything their users post. That's it, that basically the whole thing. [1]https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230 https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230
xadhominemx 6y ago
What is one example of ZH’s accuracy?
- TechBro8615 6y ago
  ZeroHedge was one of the first outlets to cover Coronavirus and raise the alarm about it.
- olivermarks 6y ago
  follow this story posted on ZH today over the next few days https://www.zerohedge.com/political/youll-bury-everyone-involved-bobulinski-recorded-biden-operatives-begging-him-stay-quiet https://www.zerohedge.com/political/youll-bury-everyone-invo... It may be incorrect &/or partisan but you are likely to read these sort of revelations on ZH first for better or worse.
  - xadhominemx 6y ago
    Did you read that link you sent me? It’s a collection of tweets and with a paragraph about QAnon at the end
    - olivermarks 6y ago
      Of course. I think the Bobulinski revelations will be a huge news story eventually. Right now the corporate media are doing their best to ignore it. It's not just 'a collection of tweets with a paragraph about QAnon at the end'. Did you actually read it?
arthurjj 6y ago
> 'follow the money to find out what the b@stards are thinking' The slightly less cynical way I think of this is that finance will directly be impacted vs non-finance so news targetted at them is more helpful, or at least not actively harming. In the financial independence community most articles on mainstream sites are considered jokes or to have insufficient detail to actually improve your finances A good non-money example: If you get a chronic disease, reading blogs and forums by people who have the disease is going to me more helpful than whatever a staff writer can do in 2 hours of research
sk2020 6y ago
I miss when ZH was an investment blog.

koenigdavidmj 6y ago

ZH was talking about coronavirus way earlier than anyone else, which is bound to happen if you don’t validate as well—sometimes you do strike gold. A comment I saw once about them was “ZH has reported five of the last three catastrophes”.

duxup 6y ago
"ZH was talking about coronavirus way earlier than anyone else" I've seen that claim too and found it questionable. Almost every major news outlet that would cover international news I found had some story about coronavirus pretty dang early. It wasn't a breathless story predicting the impact, but they covered it. I feel like most media "media does this" or "didn't do that" is mostly just what passed in front of someone's nose. Purely anecdotal experience of mine was a reddit story ages ago that was "The Media is too busy covering X to cover this story Y." Purely out of curiosity I turned around and flipped on the TV and checked the news channels. The first 3 news channels, 2 were covering Y... but the claims about nobody covering it were constant.
- selectodude 6y ago
  ZH was saying that it was going to be a catastrophe before China even started lying about how they had it under control.
  - CptFribble 6y ago
    To be fair, almost everything on ZH is predicting catastrophe - ZH is rife with prepper-flavored "this is the big one" reports on things like FEMA operations, rumors of potential false flag attacks, and of course various financial instrument movements. 99% of what ZH says is the end of all things fades into nothingness. ZH is the canonical example of a correct-twice-daily broken clock.
    - humaniania 6y ago
      Exactly this! Thank you. ZeroHedge almost seems to be designed to induce anxiety and spread disinformation.

La1n 6y ago

>I personally find lower time-to-publish immensely valuable I am curious why this is so valuable to you. In my personal life a delay of hours in the news cycle would have no effect. How does it generate value for you?

kemiller 6y ago

Low time to publish has its place, but not if it's presented as truth.

nickysielicki 6y ago

Not-so-fun fact: according to the mods on /r/conservative, submissions from zerohedge are currently banned site-wide. https://old.reddit.com/r/Conservative/comments/jhksrq/do_not_post_the_hunter_biden_video_for_any_reason/g9zu0d9/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Conservative/comments/jhksrq/do_not... It seems to check out: https://old.reddit.com/domain/zerohedge.com/new/ https://old.reddit.com/domain/zerohedge.com/new/

srtjstjsj 6y ago
That post is referring to a Hunter Biden revenge porn sex tape. Are other non-anonymous performer) revenge porn sex tapes posted on reddit?
- nickysielicki 6y ago
  That post is referring to the Hunter Biden situation, but the comment I linked to talks about total bans on certain domains which posted about Hunter Biden, including articles which have nothing to do with Hunter Biden. The sites are banned outright from reddit at the moment. Check the second link -- there hasn't been a submission from zerohedge on any subreddit in over 48 hours.

mcintyre1994 6y ago

This is a really interesting thread to read for me. I remember when I was in school as a dumb teenager watching the Zeitgeist video that was going around then, it’s a bunch of dumb conspiracy theories which if I watched now I’d probably peg as blatantly antisemitic as those things tend to be. Anyway I mention that because during that time I remember always leaning on weird ZeroHedge articles to prove things in dumb arguments. I don’t remember the specifics but it stuck with me enough to completely blacklist ZH when I realised how dumb I was being. It sounds like I probably should take a look at it from a fresh perspective and without that baggage, because it’s obviously not what I remember based on these comments.

motohagiography 6y ago

There's a basic economic characteristic I think fringe media gets right: the cost for them being wrong is almost zero, and the benefit of being right first puts them on par with news orgs with hundreds of millions in budget. If you are a reader playing the fast-story slot machine game, it's just noise until you jackpot. The big question is what is the effect of all that noise over time, and what does it make you deaf to? If the social platforms were just imposing costs on being wrong that would almost be a service, but I get the impression from all the ban stories that they're staffed mostly by people who aren't equipped to be that judicious. The platforms have thrown down their cards and are all in on this election cycle, and by showing what appears to be partisan recklessness, it's going to cost them moral high ground they might have had before all this. The good news is the people reading this forum can build a platform killer in 6-8months, and there's going to be a bunch of balance sheet cash on the sidelines looking for startups to fund. These social platform companies are all just another Friendster waiting to happen.

rhizome 6y ago
>If the social platforms were just imposing costs on being wrong that would almost be a service, but I get the impression from all the ban stories that they're staffed mostly by people who aren't equipped to be that judicious The latter sounds like an "intent" argument, that imposing the costs has a quality factor that I'd say just doesn't (or doesn't have to) exist.

unethical_ban 6y ago

>I prefer to assess the accuracy of news stories myself (usually considering the original source and how aligned their interests are with the published information) There's your problem. It's one thing to want the raw data out there if you want it, and more importantly, for others who are smarter than you to analyze it. Same principle with publishing methods and analysis of a scientific paper, or publishing source code you'll never look at to github: The fact that others can see it is important in itself. That said, your comment borders too close to the Trumpian "experts know nothing, we can't trust the fourth estate" mentality. Actually, Trumpians don't know the term 'fourth estate'. Anyway. There is value in having institutions of trust investigate events and curate the story.

einpoklum 6y ago

> because they're not actually trustworthy to me Mainstream US media are not trustworthy, period. Repeated cases of going beyond bias and into simply parroting government or political party claims with no evidentiary basis, merely for influencing public opinion one way or another. Often, one would guess, while fully knowing the claims are baseless. The omission of coverage of various issues also contributes to the 'trust-unworthiness'.

secondcoming 6y ago

ZH is still trying to disprove the Russian links to various novichok poisonings. They don't seem to realise that the rest of the world has kind of forgotten about it. It's definitely got some Russian backing, but there are occasionally some quite good finance-related articles on it too. Just avoid the comment section!