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Reporting on tech companies means finding people who don’t want to be found

nytimes.com

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Re: Reporting on tech companies means finding people who don’t want to be found

#3
> I’m also a prolific screenshotter. The internet is an ephemeral place, so when I see something online for a story, I make sure to capture it immediately.

Why are screenshots seen as the gold standard for documenting deleted content? They are easily faked.

Re: Reporting on tech companies means finding people who don’t want to be found

#4

> I’m also a prolific screenshotter. The internet is an ephemeral place, so when I see something online for a story, I make sure to capture it immediately. Why are screenshots seen as the gold standard for documenting deleted content? They are easily faked.

I’ve searched for web archival services before, but never found anything outside of some expensive legal services.

It would be great if there was a service like the waybackmachine but which could be use to archive on demand, and make those archives publicly available.

The internet archive is great for this, but they also respect robots.txt and don’t guarantee that they’ll archive pages you request.

Re: Reporting on tech companies means finding people who don’t want to be found

#5

> I’m also a prolific screenshotter. The internet is an ephemeral place, so when I see something online for a story, I make sure to capture it immediately. Why are screenshots seen as the gold standard for documenting deleted content? They are easily faked.

Lack of better options, where easy and fast are criteria.

Re: Reporting on tech companies means finding people who don’t want to be found

#6

> I’m also a prolific screenshotter. The internet is an ephemeral place, so when I see something online for a story, I make sure to capture it immediately. Why are screenshots seen as the gold standard for documenting deleted content? They are easily faked.

You're totally correct. But if you just want to document something for your own future review, screenshots work fine. The thing is, journalism sees itself as being above citations. Journalists are primarily relying on their reputations as journalists, not evidence; the word of a journalist is supposed to be evidence, valid as a citation elsewhere. Journalists don't even record all of their interviews, a lot of them just get jotted down on paper and pieced together later. When they do record interviews, they don't include ways for the public to independently review those recordings to make sure that the written word corresponds 1:1 with what was spoken. You're supposed to trust them, even though we have plenty of examples of journalists who lied or just got sloppy. The profession needs a serious makeover. Historians used to be viewed this way, too. I'm forgetting the details, but there was an historian in the late 1800s who was actually criticised for meticulously citing his sources rather than relying on his reputation as an historian and letting historians of the future decide the merit of his work based on that.

Re: Reporting on tech companies means finding people who don’t want to be found

#7

> I’m also a prolific screenshotter. The internet is an ephemeral place, so when I see something online for a story, I make sure to capture it immediately. Why are screenshots seen as the gold standard for documenting deleted content? They are easily faked.

[deleted]

Re: Reporting on tech companies means finding people who don’t want to be found

#8

> I’m also a prolific screenshotter. The internet is an ephemeral place, so when I see something online for a story, I make sure to capture it immediately. Why are screenshots seen as the gold standard for documenting deleted content? They are easily faked.

You're totally correct. But if you just want to document something for your own future review, screenshots work fine. The thing is, journalism sees itself as being above citations. Journalists are primarily relying on their reputations as journalists, not evidence; the word of a journalist is supposed to be evidence, valid as a citation elsewhere. Journalists don't even record all of their interviews, a lot of them j…

Journalism is also not peer-review. It should never be viewed as such. Anonymous sources, the tendency for people to shy away from being recorded and just the speed of the news preclude some of what you are talking about.

That said, I agree that journalists should be held to account. One of the victims of the decline of print media are local news outlets who are checking each other. I've noticed a trend in my own local paper to view themselves as above reproach, the singular check on all that is evil, but not likely to correct their own mistakes. Perhaps some of what you are talking about could check that.

Re: Reporting on tech companies means finding people who don’t want to be found

#9
post #4

> I’m also a prolific screenshotter. The internet is an ephemeral place, so when I see something online for a story, I make sure to capture it immediately. Why are screenshots seen as the gold standard for documenting deleted content? They are easily faked.

I’ve searched for web archival services before, but never found anything outside of some expensive legal services. It would be great if there was a service like the waybackmachine but which could be use to archive on demand, and make those archives publicly available. The internet archive is great for this, but they also respect robots.txt and don’t guarantee that they’ll archive pages you request.

Just post some terrorist stuff on there and the NSA will do that for you

Re: Reporting on tech companies means finding people who don’t want to be found

#10
I'm surprised that despite being able to concisely explain why Apple is preferable to Google due to the privacy implications of their respective business models, they're perfectly content with a Google Home in their kitchen!

Maybe I'm paranoid, but isn't it obvious how the whole Home Speaker story ends? "We're not spying on you, we're learning your behaviors to offer a better experience!"

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