6 ms·
why in the world is this being sunset i wonder
by helle253 8mo ago
why in the world is this being sunset i wonder
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- themafia 8mo agoThe internet now exists and easily surpasses the value of this static publication.
- varun_ch 8mo agoThe World Factbook was a really useful resource on the internet.
- MattGaiser 8mo agoThis is an odd thing to say for something heavily used on the internet. It was not just a physical book.
- themafia 8mo ago> It was not just a physical book. It was. You were able to access a copy on the internet. It was neither edited nor published there. As such it simply couldn't compete with resources that are.
- simonw 8mo agoIncorrect. The website was updated weekly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Factbook#Frequency_of_updates_and_availability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Factbook#Frequency_o...
- psyklic 8mo agoWhat is this then: https://web.archive.org/web/20260203163430/https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/ https://web.archive.org/web/20260203163430/https://www.cia.g... It clearly states on the page that the Factbook was continuously updated, with "new data uploaded this week".
- tombert 8mo agoHas it though? Isn't one of the concerns of information on the internet (regardless of political affiliation) that a lot of it is total bullshit? I've seen so many responses from AI and AI "Summaries" that source claims from 20 year old unsourced forum posts. For that matter, people just make shit up, all the time, often for no apparent reason. It's upsetting that it took me until my 30's to realize that, but regardless I think there is value in canonical, well-funded sources, even with the internet.
- thaumasiotes 8mo agoThe existence of secondary sources doesn't reduce the need for primary sources. Before something can be published everywhere, it has to be published somewhere.
- throwawayq3423 8mo agoNot if everything is made up on the spot for clicks and views, which is where we're heading.
- themafia 8mo agoThe CIA was a secondary source. This bulk of this material is all drawn from other publications. Which you can now access in ways you could not before.
- anigbrowl 8mo agoWe get it, you can't see any utility in having this information aggregated anywhere in a consistent format.
- arrowsmith 8mo agoThe CIA World Factbook is a tertiary source.
- hulitu 8mo agoBut treated by Wikipedia as _the_ primary source. /s
- red-iron-pine 8mo agoit is an official release put out by an organ of the US government responsible for creating intelligence. presumably their facts are undergoing vetting and validation.
- thaumasiotes 8mo ago
- mavhc 8mo agoFacts are not a thing the government is interested in now
- rbanffy 8mo agoNor is soft power. The factbook was much more a tool for propaganda than anything else. While you could trust most of the numbers, you shouldn’t expect it to be fair about any socialist or communist countries, usually classified as brutal dictatorships, while it would always be exceedingly kind to countries with US sponsored dictators.
- pxc 8mo agoYep. This seems somewhat similar in motivation to the cuts to USAID.
- shevy-java 8mo agoWhile that is true, the current government makes heavy use of propaganda too.
- rbanffy 8mo agoTrue, but they have abandoned the subtlety of the factbook.
- edsu 8mo agoThe suggestion that obvious propaganda is somehow better than "subtle" propaganda is itself propaganda.
- rbanffy 8mo agoObvious propaganda plays a role in the destruction of a shared objective reality, which is part of the authoritarian playbook. Subtle propaganda distorts reality but preserves the notion of a shared objective one and does not intend to undermine trust. When a government uses blatant, easily disproven lies, but doubles down on the lies and continues with increasingly absurd ones, there is no space for subtlety or trustworthy sources in that government.
- sixdimensional 8mo agoI concur. Also, it was paid for by US taxpayer dollars - the entire content should have been released somewhere for free, maybe even someone would have started up a new project to maintain it, for example, something under Wikimedia or some other nonprofit. This wholesale elimination of valuable information and data owned by the public is so incredibly sad and damaging to our future. Maybe we need a FOIA request to get the entire contents released to the public.
- rbanffy 8mo ago> Maybe we need a FOIA request to get the entire contents released to the public. That’s a sound idea.
- toomuchtodo 8mo agohttps://www.muckrock.com/ https://www.muckrock.com/
- simonw 8mo agoIf enough people FOIA them maybe they'll decide it's cheaper to just put the archived website back up!
- rbanffy 8mo agoMaybe the next president will do that. I don't think this one will.
- oxfeed65261 8mo agoIt seems to be archived on the wayback machine, for example https://web.archive.org/web/20260203163430/https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/ https://web.archive.org/web/20260203163430/https://www.cia.g... It was available for online browsing or as a downloadable file, I think a zip compressed PDF. I’m sure copies are available, but it would be nice to have an authoritative source.
- 8mo ago
- hn_acc1 8mo agoTo avoid pesky facts getting in the way of them attempting to re-write history, like in 1984 (the book).
- hulitu 8mo agoSocial media is much more suited to spread propaganda.
- joezydeco 8mo agoMetafilter has a theory: "Apparently the judge in the Haitian TPS case cited the Factbook in her injunction ruling. There's quite a bit of speculation that that's why it's gone now."