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Unmasking the Men Behind Zero Hedge

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Re: Unmasking the Men Behind Zero Hedge

#71

Post by mark_l_watson »

With some reluctance, I follow ZH on Twitter. Like other sites like Russian Times, Haretz, Al Jazera, it is good to be skeptical, but it is also good to break out of the hold that mainstream media has. In the USA, the "news" is so bad that I honestly believe that I get more information from random reading, just a few minutes a day, of sources from many countries on the web than the network "news."

I travel a fair amount, and it seems like people in other countries don't have an obsession with "news" that so many of my acquaintances in the USA have. I think that one hour a week is about the maximum amount of time anyone should spend on the news - better to spend the time engaging in business, family and friend time, write a book, volunteer with a charity, community involvement, etc.

Re: Unmasking the Men Behind Zero Hedge

#72

Post by dismal2 »

21 wrote: post #45
dismal2 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All their coverage of hft when nobody was talking about it

The usual coverage of HFT on ZH is like this: Gold price spikes down, it's the HFT slamming it because they work for the Central Banks. Gold price spikes up, it's because investors are concerned about the market. Stocks spike up, it's the HFT again. Stocks spike down - investors start seeing that the whole market is a scam. So the HFT trade only in the "wrong" direction according to ZH. They sell gold and buy stocks.…

I meant around the time of the flash crash and in them making hft more mainstream

Re: Unmasking the Men Behind Zero Hedge

#73

Post by maze-le »

didjdjjdjf wrote: post #53
alistproducer2 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think that the authors have no problem with authoritarianism Like any conspiracy site, it's going to attract people who share a view of the world in which everything must be orchestrated, controlled - a reason for all things. Randomness has no place in the mind of a conspiracy theorist. The order provided by conspiracies comfort the conspiracy theorist: paradoxically making the world feel safer, more ordered while…

What's sad is no matter how often people like you are proven wrong you'll just keep on repeating the same bullshit. I recall HN saying gold market manipulation was conspiracy theory, ZH was right HN commenters were wrong. There's a long list but when it comes to finance HN commenters are typically poorly educated.

> I recall HN saying gold market manipulation was conspiracy theory (...)

This is a pretty good example actually. ZH covered the gold/silver/libor market manipulation in pretty good detail. They also explained a lot about the insides of these deals, I frankly had no clue about. They did a pretty good job on thios one. However, this is not a conradiction to what [parent] said. Consipiracy theories do attract an authoritarian leaning mindset, he is right.

Also, on a sidenote: There are conspiracy theories that have some credibility, some of them even became true in the past (NSA, P2, at some point even the existence of the Mafia was one). Conspiracy theories become problematic, when they become an ideology. When you explain everyone and everything in the context of a conspiracy, you run in a one-way filter-bubble, because everything supports the theory, especially facts, that contradict them.

Re: Unmasking the Men Behind Zero Hedge

#74

Post by snake_plissken »

I have a love hate relationship with Zerohedge.

On the one hand, they can produce some really amazing and compelling content, whether its their own analysis or an analysis of an article from somewhere else on the web. A recent article of memory: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-01-17/what-just-happened-....

But over the years the site's tone has changed. While they are still dedicated to financial news and insights, they post a lot of survivalist non-sense and it feels more like a far Right wing blog now, advocating you to buy gold in one article that sits below another highlighting proof that the gold market is fixed. I can support a position of reporting on everything and anything, but these inconsistencies and the fact that there is a dearth of articles with viewpoints and analysis from the Left has led me to question their true motives now. They'll also censor you for trying to bring this up in their comments section. A few years ago my account was banned after I called them out for putting up an article stating how some Goldman report was BS, while simultaneously they had up a blog post that used stats from a different Goldman report.

I still visit the site everyday. They still occasionally break some headline stories and you still find some really great articles. But generally it's become an insufferable website.

Re: Unmasking the Men Behind Zero Hedge

#75

Post by w0utert »

didjdjjdjf wrote: post #53
alistproducer2 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think that the authors have no problem with authoritarianism Like any conspiracy site, it's going to attract people who share a view of the world in which everything must be orchestrated, controlled - a reason for all things. Randomness has no place in the mind of a conspiracy theorist. The order provided by conspiracies comfort the conspiracy theorist: paradoxically making the world feel safer, more ordered while…

What's sad is no matter how often people like you are proven wrong you'll just keep on repeating the same bullshit. I recall HN saying gold market manipulation was conspiracy theory, ZH was right HN commenters were wrong. There's a long list but when it comes to finance HN commenters are typically poorly educated.

You get downvoted, but IMO you make a good point. There's a lot of things on ZH that are far-fetched, many articles by guest writers that are clearly in the 'conspiracy theory' corner, but if you use your brain to filter out the noise, there's a lot of truth to be found on ZH that most other media outlets don't want to report on (for whatever reason).

It's not just HN commenters who are typically poorly educated about finance, almost nobody thinks any more about these things than what they get from the mainstream media.

Years later, after things have crashed and burned and many of the 'conspiracy theories' that had been on ZH years before they turned out to be (at least partially) true, those same people flock to movies like 'The Big Short' in large numbers, and the talk of town is 'how nobody could have seen this coming'... :-/

Re: Unmasking the Men Behind Zero Hedge

#76

Post by saalweachter »

tptacek wrote: post #62
tomp wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could say that about all conspiracy theories, especially those that have since come true.

So what? That's not analysis, it's numerology. Just because some things are true doesn't mean all theories are equally deserving of dignity. But the notion that the USG was monitoring the Internet was entirely deserving of dignity: * It's their job * The software security industry is full of people who used to hack professionally for them * There'd been a major news story roughly every other year since the 1990s Eche…

Another important point-- once you get into the conspiracy theory mindset, it's not so much that a conspiracy or some conspiracies happen. There's a tendency to believe that all conspiracies are true, even the contradictory ones.

Your average conspiracy theorist doesn't just believe the NSA is spying on Americans [they better be spying on non-Americans; we taxpayers are paying them a lot of money to do so] or that Putin has had a few guys killed. Your average conspiracy theorist believes that the Moon landing was faked, JFK was assassinated by a coordinated effort of at least three different groups, there are cures to cancer and all other diseases being kept secret by corporations and/or the gov'ment, Hitler is still alive, aliens have visited the Earth, are living here, and have secret treaties with various states, the UN has real power, various diseases [eg, HIV] are man-made, and various biblical artifacts have been found and kept secret.

You rarely find a conspiracy theorist who believes one crazy thing, it's almost all or nothing. It's this weird credulity veiled as skepticism for the establishment

Re: Unmasking the Men Behind Zero Hedge

#77

Post by throwanem »

TorKlingberg wrote: post #38
maze-le wrote: post #16

I stopped reading this site some years ago. It had, and probably still has some interesting opinins and analysis. Most content is pretty far fetched / sensationalist, but if you have your grain of salt, this is not a problem, since most media outlets do this in one form or another. About 2 years ago the tenor of the publications shifted from libertarian to more and more reactionary (bordering on proto-fascist). When…

Could you link to a couple of examples? I am not interested enough to go searching. I did find an anti-vaxxer piece on the frontpage, which did not exactly inspire trust: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-04-28/why-our-children-sh...

If your framework is trust rather than critical analysis, you're going to get suckered no matter what news media you choose to consume.

Re: Unmasking the Men Behind Zero Hedge

#78

Post by maze-le »

danielweber wrote: post #66
natrius wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a world of centralized media, the incentives led outlets to promote viewpoints supported by the elite and omit viewpoints that would offend them. Their access to viewers, leads and advertising dollars required the party line product we all recognize. In a world of decentralized media, you can't get readers to keep coming back if you're just another mainstream news source. Instead, you have to choose a niche viewpo…

The simpler, less sinister explanation, is that normal moderate viewpoints do not pay the bills, but extreme and sensational viewpoints -- whatever the flavor -- do.

There is truth in that, its a sad state of affairs...

Re: Unmasking the Men Behind Zero Hedge

#79

Post by natrius »

danielweber wrote: post #66
natrius wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a world of centralized media, the incentives led outlets to promote viewpoints supported by the elite and omit viewpoints that would offend them. Their access to viewers, leads and advertising dollars required the party line product we all recognize. In a world of decentralized media, you can't get readers to keep coming back if you're just another mainstream news source. Instead, you have to choose a niche viewpo…

The simpler, less sinister explanation, is that normal moderate viewpoints do not pay the bills, but extreme and sensational viewpoints -- whatever the flavor -- do.

That's exactly what I'm saying. It's not a conspiracy. It's just what's profitable.

Re: Unmasking the Men Behind Zero Hedge

#80

Post by tomp »

tptacek wrote: post #62
tomp wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could say that about all conspiracy theories, especially those that have since come true.

So what? That's not analysis, it's numerology. Just because some things are true doesn't mean all theories are equally deserving of dignity. But the notion that the USG was monitoring the Internet was entirely deserving of dignity: * It's their job * The software security industry is full of people who used to hack professionally for them * There'd been a major news story roughly every other year since the 1990s Eche…

This is basically the no true Scotsmann argument. Things that I believe in aren't conspiracy theories, because I don't believe in conspiracy theories, I'm just better informed.

In any case, maybe we're a bit off point here, but what ZH posts is definitely closer to "NSA is spying on everybody" than to "lizards run the world" or "moon landing never happened".

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