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Jack Blanchard in the Politico podcast (almost as good as Odd Lots if you're fine with listening to stuff at 2x speed on commutes) remarked that one of the most

Jack Blanchard in the Politico podcast (almost as good as Odd Lots if you're fine with listening to stuff at 2x speed on commutes) remarked that one of the most important aspects of the response to the publicization of the first 2% of the Epstein Files is that it may be a watershed moment where the better parts of citizen journalism have become completely competitive with institutional journalism, due heavily to the faster turnaround times of the former. It's hard to see conventional pipelines doing a faster job of parsing scattered mentions of rare phrases like 'jerky' across a million documents than the competitive environment of individual entrepreneurialism could.

siavosh 8mo ago
There’s also a lot of self censorship happening in the mass media.
- aorloff 8mo ago
  and a lot of actual censorship jimmy kimmel didn't self censor himself off the air
- lyu07282 8mo ago
  For example the Israel connection, for obvious reasons but you get censored/flagged here too if you mention that part ofc https://www.dropsitenews.com/s/epstein-and-israel https://www.dropsitenews.com/s/epstein-and-israel
hikkerl 8mo ago
[flagged]
- nofriend 8mo ago
  And which will frequently be completely wrong, but they will believe it absolutely because it fits with their political biases.
- dash2 8mo ago
  … as well as the shooter’s posting history and maybe a link to the livestream?
  - deleted 8mo ago
    [deleted]
- 64275488537 8mo ago
  Respectfully, you also said that "we now know" that taking the COVID19 vaccine could have killed you earlier today, which is completely false. I don't think you are getting your news from reliable sources, and I see this comment as further evidence of that. I'm sure there's lots of information on 4chan about the identity of mass shooters, and that some of it is accurate, but most of it is probably wild speculation, outright trolling, and mistaken identity. Like when Reddit pinned the Boston Marathon bombings on a series of innocent people who were standing on a rooftop or missing because they had killed themselves. Then again, you also openly expressed an antisemitic conspiracy theory (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46959252 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46959252) along with a lot of racist Great Replacement stuff (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46922014 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46922014), so maybe unreliable news sources are the least of it. Seems like you're probably a literal White Nationalist.
  - Enginerrrd 8mo ago
    To be honest, my working heuristic for over a decade now has been to assume that if someone openly admits to reading 4chan without any hesitation, caveats, or embarrassment, they can quite likely be lumped in with a general basket of deplorables. Is it totally fair? No. Is it reasonably high probability? IMO, yes. Is there likely information value on 4chan that could be difficult to find elsewhere? Probably. Is it worth my time and aggravation to sort through it? No.
    - hikkerl 8mo ago
      [flagged]
  - hikkerl 8mo ago
    [flagged]
  - donkeybeer 8mo ago
    [flagged]
    - 8mo ago
RajT88 8mo ago
The amount of breathless conclusion jumping from citizen journalists has been completely bananas as well. I had to tell a friend of mine to take a break from it. The level of tinfoil hat theories (example: cannibalism) which people are now taking as the truth off of which to build more theories is really something. The unfortunate thing is - in our current environment, the crazy speculation and knowingly dealing in just shit you made up seems to actually pay off when pressuring public officials. I am glad the files were released. A lot of people have a lot of explaining to do. I don't actually think this ends up going anywhere, but we'll see.
- dash2 8mo ago
  This, and also a lot of antisemitism seems to have been enabled.
  - fromMars 8mo ago
    Not shocking that this is downvoted around here. On X and the amount of anti-semitic content this is fueling is scary. As a Jewish person, I can't help feel that the magnitude of the outrage is because Epstein and quite a few of his associates were rich Jews. Not to downplay what they did as it was horrible, but I don't recall similar levels of outrage about all the scandals in the Catholic Church. Epstein isn't the first person to be involved in sex trafficking. Every big city in the world has it and it is even legal in some countries, not to mention that Pedophilia as the term is being used in the Epstein case is basically legal in most European countries with the age of consent at 15 and even 14 in some cases. It's hard not to feel like a lot of people want to paint a picture that Jews are especially depraved and amoral.
    - Hikikomori 8mo ago
      >Not to downplay Yet you go on to victim card yourself.
    - asdff 8mo ago
      >It's hard not to feel like a lot of people want to paint a picture that Jews are especially depraved and amoral. That is because it is true, a lot of people do want to paint all Jews like that. People would probably find the catholic church stuff even juicier if the vatican was running an intelligence agency that brokers with most other western intelligence agencies with these same rapists. The thing with Epstein is that he really seems heavily connected to intelligence. Maxwells dad is alleged to be a Mossad agent. There are pictures of him in meetings in his office with a map of Israel, gaza, and the west bank on the wall. There are FBI documents that allege epstein himself was at least at one point a Mossad agent. So you have this compelling israeli intelligence angle. The fact that global elites genuinely partied with this man. All the history of the case from the sweetheart plea deal in 2007 that stopped the federal investigation at the time in its tracks and granted immunity for potentially involved parties, the fact he was never actually convicted before he died (even that is suspect), the fact that outside Maxwell no one has been arrested. I mean it really quacks like a tin foil hat global elite conspiracy. That is what makes this story so damn juicy and compelling. It isn't just a couple priests getting their rocks off with some alter boys, but an entire systematic thing where its looking like this guy was not only trafficking girls but running some sort of Bene Gesserit esque breeding program impregnating teenagers he thought had good genetic traits. You couldn't even write this stuff into a movie it is so wild and hardly believable if it wasn't coming from DOJ evidence respositories.
blululu 8mo ago
That's an interesting point in general. On this particular topic I would go so far as to say that the citizen journalists are far more than what professional journalists are producing. I would guess that this is more a function of the idiosyncrasies of this particular data source. Most journalists are experts in tracking down hearsay and getting specific people to talk. The house Epstein email releases are just a massive pile of open data where someone with a more data-centric background can walk in and apply their skills.
- OgsyedIE 8mo ago
  Massive piles of documents, released erratically and possessing apparently random and sloppy redactions with inconsistent formatting rules are a common tactic in some corporate cases as well, since they intend to wear down opposing counsel through exploitation of reptile theory. AFAICT it's not well considered by DoJ that this works roughly in proportion to the technical aptitude of opposing counsel. The public has excellent technical aptitude when motivated and none otherwise and this is clearly a situation of motivation.
chatmasta 8mo ago
Hmm, maybe, but who’s really in control here? 1) The slow and steady institutional journalists who are reporting on the government 2) The fast and loose citizen journalists who are reporting on the government 3) The government who is saturating the attention of both of them while they look for something that exists in the 98% portion of unreleased documentation about government wrongdoing I mean who’s the idiot? Maybe it’s the government interns who need to read 100% to release 2%.
kevin_thibedeau 8mo ago
Institutional journalism has done everything in its power to kill this story for 7 years. You don't need a fast turnaround time when the fourth estate is also busy protecting the wealthy. Note how we have all the goods on Matt Gaetz and everyone just conveniently forgot about him because daddy knows who to buy off. DOJ has all the time to pursue rinky dink charges against Letitia James for what would be at best a losing civil case by her lender but we can't go after a known sex trafficker with good connections.
- maybelsyrup 8mo ago
  The degree to which this is true is I think still underestimated, and comments like these need more upvotes. You don’t need to appeal to shadowy cabals to explain why media professionals have been desperate for this stuff to not be true (and why, every day these days, you can still read examples of them absolutely writhing as they are obliged by public outrage to continue to report on it). All you really need is to remember that a) they have mortgages to pay, too, so why rock the boat, and b) the people who end up writing for the WSJ and the people who end up in Jeffrey’s rolodex are by and large the same class of people. They went to the same colleges, they consume similar culture and media, they play the same games of keep up with the joneses, they read the Economist on their days off and fret over Gen Z slang and wonder whether the Chase card or the Amex will get them enough airline miles to fly to London for free with their spouse etc etc. They recognize themselves in the “Epstein class” — not in their crimes, but in their manners. So why would they be party to showing the world that class is so profoundly rotten? It’d give the lie to their whole lifestyle. (And yes, to anticipate a critique here, of course there’s a difference between a producer at NBC and a billionaire! Not denying that. But they are cut from the exact same cultural and social cloth. The best proof of this is in the Epstein files themselves: not in the creepy or criminal bits, but in the mundane stuff. How he talks, what’s on his mind, the advice he gives, etc. It’s all American upper middle class humdrum stuff.)
  - ryandrake 8mo ago
    You'd think this would be the story of the century, and that every news outlet would be running it 24/7 and falling all over each other to scoop new information. Child sex trafficking to wealthy and/or well known celebrities and government officials, including the actual president of the US! What news agency in the world wouldn't be salivating for something like this? Yet, here we are, no media wants to report on it, and they all wish that we all just forget about it and go back to buying khakis.
jalapenoi 8mo ago
[dead]

siavosh 8mo ago

There’s also a lot of self censorship happening in the mass media.

aorloff 8mo ago
and a lot of actual censorship jimmy kimmel didn't self censor himself off the air
lyu07282 8mo ago
For example the Israel connection, for obvious reasons but you get censored/flagged here too if you mention that part ofc https://www.dropsitenews.com/s/epstein-and-israel https://www.dropsitenews.com/s/epstein-and-israel

hikkerl 8mo ago

[flagged]

nofriend 8mo ago
And which will frequently be completely wrong, but they will believe it absolutely because it fits with their political biases.
dash2 8mo ago
… as well as the shooter’s posting history and maybe a link to the livestream?
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
64275488537 8mo ago
Respectfully, you also said that "we now know" that taking the COVID19 vaccine could have killed you earlier today, which is completely false. I don't think you are getting your news from reliable sources, and I see this comment as further evidence of that. I'm sure there's lots of information on 4chan about the identity of mass shooters, and that some of it is accurate, but most of it is probably wild speculation, outright trolling, and mistaken identity. Like when Reddit pinned the Boston Marathon bombings on a series of innocent people who were standing on a rooftop or missing because they had killed themselves. Then again, you also openly expressed an antisemitic conspiracy theory (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46959252 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46959252) along with a lot of racist Great Replacement stuff (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46922014 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46922014), so maybe unreliable news sources are the least of it. Seems like you're probably a literal White Nationalist.
- Enginerrrd 8mo ago
  To be honest, my working heuristic for over a decade now has been to assume that if someone openly admits to reading 4chan without any hesitation, caveats, or embarrassment, they can quite likely be lumped in with a general basket of deplorables. Is it totally fair? No. Is it reasonably high probability? IMO, yes. Is there likely information value on 4chan that could be difficult to find elsewhere? Probably. Is it worth my time and aggravation to sort through it? No.
  - hikkerl 8mo ago
    [flagged]
- hikkerl 8mo ago
  [flagged]
- donkeybeer 8mo ago
  [flagged]
  - 8mo ago

RajT88 8mo ago

The amount of breathless conclusion jumping from citizen journalists has been completely bananas as well. I had to tell a friend of mine to take a break from it. The level of tinfoil hat theories (example: cannibalism) which people are now taking as the truth off of which to build more theories is really something. The unfortunate thing is - in our current environment, the crazy speculation and knowingly dealing in just shit you made up seems to actually pay off when pressuring public officials. I am glad the files were released. A lot of people have a lot of explaining to do. I don't actually think this ends up going anywhere, but we'll see.

dash2 8mo ago
This, and also a lot of antisemitism seems to have been enabled.
- fromMars 8mo ago
  Not shocking that this is downvoted around here. On X and the amount of anti-semitic content this is fueling is scary. As a Jewish person, I can't help feel that the magnitude of the outrage is because Epstein and quite a few of his associates were rich Jews. Not to downplay what they did as it was horrible, but I don't recall similar levels of outrage about all the scandals in the Catholic Church. Epstein isn't the first person to be involved in sex trafficking. Every big city in the world has it and it is even legal in some countries, not to mention that Pedophilia as the term is being used in the Epstein case is basically legal in most European countries with the age of consent at 15 and even 14 in some cases. It's hard not to feel like a lot of people want to paint a picture that Jews are especially depraved and amoral.
  - Hikikomori 8mo ago
    >Not to downplay Yet you go on to victim card yourself.
  - asdff 8mo ago
    >It's hard not to feel like a lot of people want to paint a picture that Jews are especially depraved and amoral. That is because it is true, a lot of people do want to paint all Jews like that. People would probably find the catholic church stuff even juicier if the vatican was running an intelligence agency that brokers with most other western intelligence agencies with these same rapists. The thing with Epstein is that he really seems heavily connected to intelligence. Maxwells dad is alleged to be a Mossad agent. There are pictures of him in meetings in his office with a map of Israel, gaza, and the west bank on the wall. There are FBI documents that allege epstein himself was at least at one point a Mossad agent. So you have this compelling israeli intelligence angle. The fact that global elites genuinely partied with this man. All the history of the case from the sweetheart plea deal in 2007 that stopped the federal investigation at the time in its tracks and granted immunity for potentially involved parties, the fact he was never actually convicted before he died (even that is suspect), the fact that outside Maxwell no one has been arrested. I mean it really quacks like a tin foil hat global elite conspiracy. That is what makes this story so damn juicy and compelling. It isn't just a couple priests getting their rocks off with some alter boys, but an entire systematic thing where its looking like this guy was not only trafficking girls but running some sort of Bene Gesserit esque breeding program impregnating teenagers he thought had good genetic traits. You couldn't even write this stuff into a movie it is so wild and hardly believable if it wasn't coming from DOJ evidence respositories.

blululu 8mo ago

That's an interesting point in general. On this particular topic I would go so far as to say that the citizen journalists are far more than what professional journalists are producing. I would guess that this is more a function of the idiosyncrasies of this particular data source. Most journalists are experts in tracking down hearsay and getting specific people to talk. The house Epstein email releases are just a massive pile of open data where someone with a more data-centric background can walk in and apply their skills.

OgsyedIE 8mo ago
Massive piles of documents, released erratically and possessing apparently random and sloppy redactions with inconsistent formatting rules are a common tactic in some corporate cases as well, since they intend to wear down opposing counsel through exploitation of reptile theory. AFAICT it's not well considered by DoJ that this works roughly in proportion to the technical aptitude of opposing counsel. The public has excellent technical aptitude when motivated and none otherwise and this is clearly a situation of motivation.

chatmasta 8mo ago

Hmm, maybe, but who’s really in control here? 1) The slow and steady institutional journalists who are reporting on the government 2) The fast and loose citizen journalists who are reporting on the government 3) The government who is saturating the attention of both of them while they look for something that exists in the 98% portion of unreleased documentation about government wrongdoing I mean who’s the idiot? Maybe it’s the government interns who need to read 100% to release 2%.

kevin_thibedeau 8mo ago

Institutional journalism has done everything in its power to kill this story for 7 years. You don't need a fast turnaround time when the fourth estate is also busy protecting the wealthy. Note how we have all the goods on Matt Gaetz and everyone just conveniently forgot about him because daddy knows who to buy off. DOJ has all the time to pursue rinky dink charges against Letitia James for what would be at best a losing civil case by her lender but we can't go after a known sex trafficker with good connections.

maybelsyrup 8mo ago
The degree to which this is true is I think still underestimated, and comments like these need more upvotes. You don’t need to appeal to shadowy cabals to explain why media professionals have been desperate for this stuff to not be true (and why, every day these days, you can still read examples of them absolutely writhing as they are obliged by public outrage to continue to report on it). All you really need is to remember that a) they have mortgages to pay, too, so why rock the boat, and b) the people who end up writing for the WSJ and the people who end up in Jeffrey’s rolodex are by and large the same class of people. They went to the same colleges, they consume similar culture and media, they play the same games of keep up with the joneses, they read the Economist on their days off and fret over Gen Z slang and wonder whether the Chase card or the Amex will get them enough airline miles to fly to London for free with their spouse etc etc. They recognize themselves in the “Epstein class” — not in their crimes, but in their manners. So why would they be party to showing the world that class is so profoundly rotten? It’d give the lie to their whole lifestyle. (And yes, to anticipate a critique here, of course there’s a difference between a producer at NBC and a billionaire! Not denying that. But they are cut from the exact same cultural and social cloth. The best proof of this is in the Epstein files themselves: not in the creepy or criminal bits, but in the mundane stuff. How he talks, what’s on his mind, the advice he gives, etc. It’s all American upper middle class humdrum stuff.)
- ryandrake 8mo ago
  You'd think this would be the story of the century, and that every news outlet would be running it 24/7 and falling all over each other to scoop new information. Child sex trafficking to wealthy and/or well known celebrities and government officials, including the actual president of the US! What news agency in the world wouldn't be salivating for something like this? Yet, here we are, no media wants to report on it, and they all wish that we all just forget about it and go back to buying khakis.

jalapenoi 8mo ago

[dead]