Did they remove him from hacker news too?
Very strange HN comment page, almost every top comment seems to get downvoted...
John Oliver is erased from Chinese internet following segment on China
91–100 of 137 posts
Re: John Oliver is erased from Chinese internet following segment on China
#92I don't agree with the censorship decision, but I completely get why other countries don't like Oliver's show. He likes to denounce other countries' politics from the point of view of liberal, first world policy, which may not be in the best interest of other nations. Even though he is doing comedy for the first world market, it comes off clearly as another attempt of propaganda directed at these countries. The way C…
I can watch John Oliver a lot more easily than Stephen Colbert. Oliver at least does his homework, presents facts, and produces episodes on issues that actually matter to him.
Colbert just seems like the democrat equivalent of Fox News... putting a leftish spin on whatever issue crosses his desk without any regard for journalism.
Even when he speaks on lefty issues that I care about, he seems disingenuous. Like he’s just trying to get brownie points for being progressive. I think he’s so scared of being lumped in with other white men he just goes along ideologically with whatever the lefty zeitgeist tells him to do.
His interviews with people of color are like pulling teeth for me to watch. He’s trying to pander to them, but you can tell he doesn’t actually understand racism or black experience with any depth. He is looking for the “right” thing to say without necessarily caring why it’s right or wrong.
It’s awkward because someone like Jay-Z doesn’t care if you pander to him. He’s dealing with actual politics and actual discrimination and I think people like that are often insulted when someone like Colbert comes at them with the “look at this, aren’t I saying right things?” song and dance.
Re: John Oliver is erased from Chinese internet following segment on China
#93Re: John Oliver is erased from Chinese internet following segment on China
#94Re: John Oliver is erased from Chinese internet following segment on China
#95I don't agree with the censorship decision, but I completely get why other countries don't like Oliver's show. He likes to denounce other countries' politics from the point of view of liberal, first world policy, which may not be in the best interest of other nations. Even though he is doing comedy for the first world market, it comes off clearly as another attempt of propaganda directed at these countries. The way C…
No, actually nothing he analyzes is from a liberal point of view. That is completely false.
Re: John Oliver is erased from Chinese internet following segment on China
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
>I think the key word there is misleading. Having a genuinely-held viewpoint and expressing it through media isn't propaganda, it's opinion and commentary. It's misleading if you omit facts which run contrary to your narrative. I have no idea if this is the case in the China episode, but he has done this previously (specifically thinking about some comments he made on the wage gap, but I'd have to hunt for others.)
> It's misleading if you omit facts which run contrary to your narrative. I have no idea if this is the case in the China episode, but he has done this previously Even though I don't know you, I'm sure at some point you've omitted some fact that was contrary to your option or some narrative you were expressing (because literally everyone has). Does that make you a propagandist and everything you write propaganda? Oli…
>Even though I don't know you, I'm sure at some point you've omitted some fact that was contrary to your option or some narrative you were expressing (because literally everyone has). Does that make you a propagandist and everything you write propaganda?
Do you not think the standard should be higher for someone on national TV with an audience of millions?
Re: John Oliver is erased from Chinese internet following segment on China
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
Essentially any narrative which is not 100% fact based and unbiased is technically propaganda. So in your world is all news propaganda?
In my world, which is the same as yours, where the word "propoganda" has a definition, I consider all news which fits the definition to in fact be propaganda, yes. Let me ask you this? Do you consider Fox News propaganda? How about MSNBC? CNN? If not, which shows specifically? I'm fairly certain the _majority_ of what those networks air falls squarely in the propaganda bucket because what they air is primarily dictat…
> "I'm fairly certain the _majority_ of what those networks air falls squarely in the propaganda bucket because what they air is primarily dictated by how much money they think it will make them."
This explanation seems confused to me.
Is the primary concern of these networks ideology or is it profit? If it's ideology, then profit does not dictate their content. If it's profit, then ideology does not dictate their content. There, of course, is overlap, but there must be one primary goal that ultimately decides content.
Personally, I do not believe those news organizations are propaganda because I do not believe they would forego profit to push an ideological stance. In contrast, I believe that state media in China would forego profits to push an ideological stance.
As a real world example, we can consider how the New York Times pushed the Clinton e-mail story ad nausem in the lead up to the 2016 election, despite this being in opposition to the ideology of the majority of its readers.
Re: John Oliver is erased from Chinese internet following segment on China
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is. If someone eats 100 hot dogs in 20 minutes, you might still say "That's impressive" but also feel horrified and sickened.
I see your point, and although technically correct, the writer had a lot of words to choose from. For instance, if a nourishing lake had suddenly dried up, I'd use a different word. Perhaps devastating.
I see the word choice as more than technically correct. "Impressive" does not necessarily carry a positive connotation.
Re: John Oliver is erased from Chinese internet following segment on China
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
All states must inevitably collapse.
There’s no law of the universe about this, other than the sun exploding and heat death. One of the plausible catastrophic end states for humanity is an ultra-stable technocratic totalitarian global state, enabled by pervasive super high tech surveillance and censorship. It’s one of the ‘great filter’ possibilities for why sentient beings never colonise the galaxy - they’re all trapped in bureaucratic self serving ver…
So basically Brazil (Terry Gilliam)?
Re: John Oliver is erased from Chinese internet following segment on China
#100I don't agree with the censorship decision, but I completely get why other countries don't like Oliver's show. He likes to denounce other countries' politics from the point of view of liberal, first world policy, which may not be in the best interest of other nations. Even though he is doing comedy for the first world market, it comes off clearly as another attempt of propaganda directed at these countries. The way C…
He's done a lot (most?) of his shows in the same fashion denouncing US-based companies, policies, etc. It's about issues, not countries.
This exactly.
The top 1 or 2 post on HN right now is about civil forfeiture in the US, a policy I’d guess most people familiar with it today had never heard of before the Oliver segment on it a few years back.