7 ms·

Australia and UK might soon go down this path. Something quite depressing is if we (HN crowd) find workarounds, most regular folks won't have the budget/expert

by nomilk 1y ago

Australia and UK might soon go down this path. Something quite depressing is if we (HN crowd) find workarounds, most regular folks won't have the budget/expertise to do so, so citizen journalism will have been successfully muted by government / big media.

hdgvhicv 1y ago
90% of “citizen journalism” is nothing of the sort. Just like “citizen science” researching vaccines.
- RansomStark 1y ago
  Preach comrade! Those citizen journalists with their primary sources, disgusting. Thats nothing but propaganda. Remember it doesnt matter what the video shows, it only matters who showed it to you.
  - Barrin92 1y ago
    >Remember it doesnt matter what the video shows, it only matters who showed it to you In an age of mass media (where there's a video for anything) or now one step further synthetic media knowing who makes something is much more important than the content, given that what's being shown can be created on demand. Propaganda in the modern world is taking something that actually happened, and then framing it as an authentic piece of information found "on the street", twisting its context. "what's in the video" is now largely pointless, and anyone who isn't gullible will obviously always focus on where the promoter of any material wants to direct the audiences attention to, or what they want to deflect from.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - p_j_w 1y ago
    > Remember it doesnt matter what the video shows, it only matters who showed it to you. Both matter.
  - anigbrowl 1y ago
    You really think someone would do that? Just go on the internet and tell lies?
  - weberer 1y ago
    >Remember it doesnt matter what the video shows, it only matters who showed it to you. This should be Wikipedia's official motto. I really hate how they handle "reliable sources".
- nomilk 1y ago
  > 90% of “citizen journalism” is (trash) You're right. But compared to what? I guess 99% of mainstream "journalism" is irrelevant and/or inaccurate, hence citizen journalism is a 10x improvement in accuracy and relevancy! Not 10% better, 900% better! This makes a huge difference to our society as a whole and in our daily lives! But this misses the most important point which is that the user should have the right to choose for themselves what they say and read. Making citizen journalism unduly burdensome deprives everyone of that choice.
- logicchains 1y ago
  Citizen journalism avoids the main weakness of a centralised system: it's incredible suspectible to capture. A prime example of this is the mass opposition around the world to Israel's genocide in Gaza. Israel committed such genocides prior to the event of social media, such as the Nakba, but it was rarely reported on, due to media ownership being concentrated in the hands of a few pro-Zionist individuals.
  - hdgvhicv 1y ago
    Using “pro-Zionist” when you mean “Jewish” doesn’t mean you aren’t antisemitic
- necovek 1y ago
  Hopefully, as a reader, you can see through the 90% and only really trust the 10% who provide factual reporting. As with any source, always question what you are being offered: is this video clip full, what preceded it, what followed it? Who else confirms this person said this or experienced that?
GlacierFox 1y ago
I would have laughed in your face if you wrote this comment merely 6 months ago. Now I'm just depressed. (UK)
- jll29 1y ago
  When ES leaked his info to the Guardian people, they could still (2013) use the Guardian's US base to publish, protected by the US' stronger freedom of speech laws. Now, in 2025, if the same were to happen again, I'm not sure that would work quite the same way, with Trump aggressively taking American citizens' rights away. Maybe The Guardian should open a branch in Sealand...
  - SlowTao 1y ago
    It was David Graeber that said we should be wary of places like The Guardian. They are a wolf in sheeps clothing. Used a lot of the more liberal momentum of the early 2010s combined with promoting some of the more left leaning writters to gain a fair bit of clout. But underneath, they will conform to the power structures if it comes down to survival. Alas, they nay not be a Sealand edition although that would be neat.
    - lyu07282 1y ago
      This was made really obvious since the Gaza genocide began, the guardian was pushing propaganda really hard like everybody else, but now public opinion has shifted enough to the point that continued total denial of reality would cost the guardian more credibility so there was a noticable shift in the way they talk about it now. This way they can preserve some credibility for the next time they need to push propaganda on other fronts. in the US the NYT is similar, they will sometimes allow stuff get published to manufacture credibility for when they actually need it. Like see the Iraq war for example.
  - cuuupid 1y ago
    No American citizens’ rights have been taken away or can be taken away by a President. We have whistleblowers and leakers from the administration itself on a literal weekly basis, our own Department of State actively funds Signal and Tor, our media has been heavily criticizing Trump and his allies for years. A couple organizations got hit with lawsuits for publishing misinformation or skirting campaign law, but that’s about it. They tried to make flag burning illegal - which is illegal in Mexico, most of South America, all of Asia, and most of Europe - and it was shot down almost immediately as even that comes under 1st amendment rights. Please don’t lump us into the same bucket as the UK. We may have a sharply divided electorate but we don’t have a failing state!
JustExAWS 1y ago
I am just waiting for red states in the US to try this too since their current laws requiring ID verification for porn sites aren’t effective.
- curiousgal 1y ago
  > red states Well you'd be surprised to find out that this stupid policy (and many more) have been brought forward by Labour (Left).
  - nomilk 1y ago
    Both the major Australian parties (Liberal and Labor) seem as spineless as each other. They're being pushed by media conglomerates News Corp and Nine Entertainment [0] to crush competition (social media apps). With the soon-to-be-introduced 'internet licence' (euphemism: 'age verification'), and it's working. If they ban VPN's, it will make social media apps even more burdensome to access and use. [0] News Corp and Nine Entertainment together own 90% of Australian print media, and are hugely influential in radio, digital and paid and free-to-air TV. They have a lot to gain by removing access to social media apps, where many (especially young) people get their information now days.
    - SlowTao 1y ago
      How long until they produce an generative AI version of Burt Newton to do new episodes of 20 to 1 based on some social media slop? Yep, not a great time line here.
  - mikestorrent 1y ago
    At this point, anyone who has been watching politics for a few decades understands that the left/right dichotomy is primarily one designed to keep the majority of people within a certain set of bounds. We see it revealed when politicians and ideologies that should be in opposition to one another still cooperate on the same strategies, like this one. The goal right now is to make online anonymity impossible. Adult content is the wedge issue being used to make defending it unpalatable for any elected official, but nobody actually has it as a goal to prevent teenagers from looking at porn - if they did, they would be using more direct and efficient strategies. No, it's very clear that anonymous online commentary is hurting politicians and they are striking back against it.
dijit 1y ago
Don't worry, you shouldn't underestimate the capability of society. I grew up in a pretty deprived area of the UK, and we all knew "a guy" who could get you access to free cable, or shim your electric line to bypass the meter, or get you pirated CD's and VHS' and whatever. There will always be "that guy down the pub" selling raspberry pi's with some deranged outdated firmware that runs a proxy for everything in the house or whatever. To be honest with you, I might end up being that guy for a bunch of people once I'm laid off from tech like the rest. :)
- Ray20 1y ago
  Don't worry, you shouldn't underestimate the capability of society. You should be worried. Don't underestimate the capabilities of the government bureaucrats. That "guys down the pub" will quickly disappear once they start getting jail time for their activities.
  - mikestorrent 1y ago
    Yes, it's also dystopian to pin one's future on such hopes. People need to stick it to the government and demand their freedoms. Far too many things are being forced on us in the West that go against fundamental values that have been established for centuries. Somehow, things that could be unifying protests where the working class of every political stripe are able to overlook their differences and push back against government never seem to happen. It is always polarized so that it's only ever one side at a time, and the other side is against them. How does that work?
    - nemomarx 1y ago
      Reflex. People's opinion on a subject changes if you tell them which political group supports it, sometimes even if they get asked twice in a row. Tribal identity determines ideology more than the other way around for a lot of people. So as soon as Labour comes out for something, Cons are inclined to be against it and so on. The only way to have neutral protests is if no one visibly backs them and they don't become associated with a side, but then how do they get support and organization?
SlowTao 1y ago
In oz personally and yes, I warned folks of this a few years back, especially in the 12 months or so. Every time I was met with a fair bit of push back. They would argue back on technical merits, I was talking political, a politics doesn't give a damn about the tech. We have slowly been going down this path for a while now. “The laws of mathematics are very commendable, but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia,” - PM Malcolm Turnbull in 2017.
ranger_danger 1y ago
> most regular folks won't have the budget/expertise to do so I think this (incorrectly) assumes that nobody will ever capitalize on easy (and free/cheap) access to workarounds and advertise it far and wide.

by nomilk 1y ago

hdgvhicv 1y ago

90% of “citizen journalism” is nothing of the sort. Just like “citizen science” researching vaccines.

RansomStark 1y ago
Preach comrade! Those citizen journalists with their primary sources, disgusting. Thats nothing but propaganda. Remember it doesnt matter what the video shows, it only matters who showed it to you.
- Barrin92 1y ago
  >Remember it doesnt matter what the video shows, it only matters who showed it to you In an age of mass media (where there's a video for anything) or now one step further synthetic media knowing who makes something is much more important than the content, given that what's being shown can be created on demand. Propaganda in the modern world is taking something that actually happened, and then framing it as an authentic piece of information found "on the street", twisting its context. "what's in the video" is now largely pointless, and anyone who isn't gullible will obviously always focus on where the promoter of any material wants to direct the audiences attention to, or what they want to deflect from.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- p_j_w 1y ago
  > Remember it doesnt matter what the video shows, it only matters who showed it to you. Both matter.
- anigbrowl 1y ago
  You really think someone would do that? Just go on the internet and tell lies?
- weberer 1y ago
  >Remember it doesnt matter what the video shows, it only matters who showed it to you. This should be Wikipedia's official motto. I really hate how they handle "reliable sources".
nomilk 1y ago
> 90% of “citizen journalism” is (trash) You're right. But compared to what? I guess 99% of mainstream "journalism" is irrelevant and/or inaccurate, hence citizen journalism is a 10x improvement in accuracy and relevancy! Not 10% better, 900% better! This makes a huge difference to our society as a whole and in our daily lives! But this misses the most important point which is that the user should have the right to choose for themselves what they say and read. Making citizen journalism unduly burdensome deprives everyone of that choice.
logicchains 1y ago
Citizen journalism avoids the main weakness of a centralised system: it's incredible suspectible to capture. A prime example of this is the mass opposition around the world to Israel's genocide in Gaza. Israel committed such genocides prior to the event of social media, such as the Nakba, but it was rarely reported on, due to media ownership being concentrated in the hands of a few pro-Zionist individuals.
- hdgvhicv 1y ago
  Using “pro-Zionist” when you mean “Jewish” doesn’t mean you aren’t antisemitic
necovek 1y ago
Hopefully, as a reader, you can see through the 90% and only really trust the 10% who provide factual reporting. As with any source, always question what you are being offered: is this video clip full, what preceded it, what followed it? Who else confirms this person said this or experienced that?

GlacierFox 1y ago

I would have laughed in your face if you wrote this comment merely 6 months ago. Now I'm just depressed. (UK)

jll29 1y ago
When ES leaked his info to the Guardian people, they could still (2013) use the Guardian's US base to publish, protected by the US' stronger freedom of speech laws. Now, in 2025, if the same were to happen again, I'm not sure that would work quite the same way, with Trump aggressively taking American citizens' rights away. Maybe The Guardian should open a branch in Sealand...
- SlowTao 1y ago
  It was David Graeber that said we should be wary of places like The Guardian. They are a wolf in sheeps clothing. Used a lot of the more liberal momentum of the early 2010s combined with promoting some of the more left leaning writters to gain a fair bit of clout. But underneath, they will conform to the power structures if it comes down to survival. Alas, they nay not be a Sealand edition although that would be neat.
  - lyu07282 1y ago
    This was made really obvious since the Gaza genocide began, the guardian was pushing propaganda really hard like everybody else, but now public opinion has shifted enough to the point that continued total denial of reality would cost the guardian more credibility so there was a noticable shift in the way they talk about it now. This way they can preserve some credibility for the next time they need to push propaganda on other fronts. in the US the NYT is similar, they will sometimes allow stuff get published to manufacture credibility for when they actually need it. Like see the Iraq war for example.
- cuuupid 1y ago
  No American citizens’ rights have been taken away or can be taken away by a President. We have whistleblowers and leakers from the administration itself on a literal weekly basis, our own Department of State actively funds Signal and Tor, our media has been heavily criticizing Trump and his allies for years. A couple organizations got hit with lawsuits for publishing misinformation or skirting campaign law, but that’s about it. They tried to make flag burning illegal - which is illegal in Mexico, most of South America, all of Asia, and most of Europe - and it was shot down almost immediately as even that comes under 1st amendment rights. Please don’t lump us into the same bucket as the UK. We may have a sharply divided electorate but we don’t have a failing state!

JustExAWS 1y ago

I am just waiting for red states in the US to try this too since their current laws requiring ID verification for porn sites aren’t effective.

curiousgal 1y ago
> red states Well you'd be surprised to find out that this stupid policy (and many more) have been brought forward by Labour (Left).
- nomilk 1y ago
  Both the major Australian parties (Liberal and Labor) seem as spineless as each other. They're being pushed by media conglomerates News Corp and Nine Entertainment [0] to crush competition (social media apps). With the soon-to-be-introduced 'internet licence' (euphemism: 'age verification'), and it's working. If they ban VPN's, it will make social media apps even more burdensome to access and use. [0] News Corp and Nine Entertainment together own 90% of Australian print media, and are hugely influential in radio, digital and paid and free-to-air TV. They have a lot to gain by removing access to social media apps, where many (especially young) people get their information now days.
  - SlowTao 1y ago
    How long until they produce an generative AI version of Burt Newton to do new episodes of 20 to 1 based on some social media slop? Yep, not a great time line here.
- mikestorrent 1y ago
  At this point, anyone who has been watching politics for a few decades understands that the left/right dichotomy is primarily one designed to keep the majority of people within a certain set of bounds. We see it revealed when politicians and ideologies that should be in opposition to one another still cooperate on the same strategies, like this one. The goal right now is to make online anonymity impossible. Adult content is the wedge issue being used to make defending it unpalatable for any elected official, but nobody actually has it as a goal to prevent teenagers from looking at porn - if they did, they would be using more direct and efficient strategies. No, it's very clear that anonymous online commentary is hurting politicians and they are striking back against it.

dijit 1y ago

Don't worry, you shouldn't underestimate the capability of society. I grew up in a pretty deprived area of the UK, and we all knew "a guy" who could get you access to free cable, or shim your electric line to bypass the meter, or get you pirated CD's and VHS' and whatever. There will always be "that guy down the pub" selling raspberry pi's with some deranged outdated firmware that runs a proxy for everything in the house or whatever. To be honest with you, I might end up being that guy for a bunch of people once I'm laid off from tech like the rest. :)

Ray20 1y ago
Don't worry, you shouldn't underestimate the capability of society. You should be worried. Don't underestimate the capabilities of the government bureaucrats. That "guys down the pub" will quickly disappear once they start getting jail time for their activities.
- mikestorrent 1y ago
  Yes, it's also dystopian to pin one's future on such hopes. People need to stick it to the government and demand their freedoms. Far too many things are being forced on us in the West that go against fundamental values that have been established for centuries. Somehow, things that could be unifying protests where the working class of every political stripe are able to overlook their differences and push back against government never seem to happen. It is always polarized so that it's only ever one side at a time, and the other side is against them. How does that work?
  - nemomarx 1y ago
    Reflex. People's opinion on a subject changes if you tell them which political group supports it, sometimes even if they get asked twice in a row. Tribal identity determines ideology more than the other way around for a lot of people. So as soon as Labour comes out for something, Cons are inclined to be against it and so on. The only way to have neutral protests is if no one visibly backs them and they don't become associated with a side, but then how do they get support and organization?

SlowTao 1y ago

In oz personally and yes, I warned folks of this a few years back, especially in the 12 months or so. Every time I was met with a fair bit of push back. They would argue back on technical merits, I was talking political, a politics doesn't give a damn about the tech. We have slowly been going down this path for a while now. “The laws of mathematics are very commendable, but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia,” - PM Malcolm Turnbull in 2017.

ranger_danger 1y ago

> most regular folks won't have the budget/expertise to do so I think this (incorrectly) assumes that nobody will ever capitalize on easy (and free/cheap) access to workarounds and advertise it far and wide.