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The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

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Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#431

Post by schemy »

awinder wrote: post #154
irontinkerer wrote: post #127

The first link in the article is not a "lie". "Portland Protesters Burn Bibles, American Flags In The Streets" has a RT video that shows exactly that, and links to several other confirmed Twitter accounts all stating the same thing. How is that a lie?

There's been a lot of coverage around false-flag sorts of behavior in Portland, but the fact that this thing is being pumped through the lie pipelines that originate with places like RT (Russian state-controlled media) is kinda a dead giveaway. We can get into a nuanced discussion of "is it really lying" since there's a video, but I have not been a party to any conversations in my lifetime that start with a nuanced d…

>There's been a lot of coverage around false-flag sorts of behavior in Portland

And has any of it found to be true?

I see a worrying amount of blame on invisible spies for actions that happen all the time in the real world without the need to sound like we are living in Red Scare 2.0.

To literally quote 1984:

>The most savage yells of all came from the schoolchildren. The speech had been proceeding for perhaps twenty minutes when a messenger hurried on to the platform and a scrap of paper was slipped into the speaker's hand. He unrolled and read it without pausing in his speech. Nothing altered in his voice or manner, or in the content of what he was saying, but suddenly the names were different. Without words said, a wave of understanding rippled through the crowd. Oceania was at war with Eastasia! The next moment there was a tremendous commotion. The banners and posters with which the square was decorated were all wrong! Quite half of them had the wrong faces on them. It was sabotage! The agents of Goldstein had been at work! There was a riotous interlude while posters were ripped from the walls, banners torn to shreds and trampled underfoot. The Spies performed prodigies of activity in clambering over the rooftops and cutting the streamers that fluttered from the chimneys. But within two or three minutes it was all over.

Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#432

Post by klyrs »

googthrowaway42 wrote: post #305
klyrs wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, its scope is very narrowly about the Mormon faith. Conversely, Snopes doesn't tend to weigh in on things like the stories surrounding Joseph Smith.

[flagged]

That's precisely it! The internet is full of "X but for Y" but they rarely take off unless Y really needs their own X.

Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#433

Post by dragonwriter »

googthrowaway42 wrote: post #375
dragonwriter wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How can you say this when Nazis famously "pioneered" and promulgated things like Phrenology and Eugenics? They...didn't. Phrenology was was developed at the end of the 18th century and scientifically discredited by the mid-19th century; the Nazis may have adopted it, but that's proof that they weren't motivated by anything like scientific rationalism. Eugenics is overtly ideological (and, again, not pioneered by th…

> scientifically discredited by the mid-19th century I mean the science is bunk but it wasn't "discredited" in the sense that you mean among the scientific community or the policy community across the West who enacted policies based on it well until after the mid 20th century. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics_in_the_United_States > the Nazis may have adopted it, but that's proof that they weren't motivated by a…

> I mean the science is bunk

Since you dismiss the existence of objective, non-ideological facts, isn't that necessarily your position on all science?

> but it wasn't "discredited" in the sense that you mean among the scientific community or the policy community across the West who enacted policies based on it well until after the mid 20th century

Yes, phrenology was discredited , and why you posted a link about eugenics to support your rebuttal of a point about phrenology that had nothing to do with eugenics, I don't know.

> The Nazis adopted scientific racism and this is proof they weren't motivated by scientific rationalism?

That wasn't my actual argument, but it works, since “scientific racism” doesn't actually follow the methodology of post-enlightment empiricism, merely adopting it as an elaborate rhetorical flourish for propaganda purposes, much the way that, say, intelligent design does. It recognizes that some of it's audience might be positively disposed to the superficial appearance of empiricism, rather than actually embracing it itself.

Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#434

Post by mancerayder »

andrewtbham wrote: post #173

> it is not that the facts it reports tend to be inaccurate yes it is. I really lost faith in nyt when they ran article about running out of running out of charge in a Tesla. When they were caught red handed lying they still wouldn't admit to it. Their response was: "Problems With Precision and Judgment, but Not Integrity, in Tesla Test" They just don't get it. People are sick of their BS and they need to just comp t…

Tesla is a scientific error, but what about their 1619 Project stuff?

For me it was the wild Op Eds literally calling for a revolution, and a two day focus on Trump on the front page and the side op eds while there were riots within view of my window. I remember specifically seeing 5 helicopters within sight, after a second day of rioting, seeing nothing mentioned in the home town NYT that we had sacked Soho and Midtown in consecutive days, hundreds of businesses attacked, and deciding then and there that it was a dangerous, misleading newspaper. After several years of subscribing, I unsubscribed.

Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#435

Post by aktenlage »

luckylion wrote: post #425
aktenlage wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public broadcasting does not replace FAZ/Zeit/Spiegel though. There's a difference between reporting short pieces of news and the articles in the mentioned news papers.

They're not completely the same, but they are competitors, since they also have vast text websites, they're not limited to broadcasting, which makes sense given their desire to expand the tax base and the population's pivot from TV to web. I find the argument "look at quality of the private sector, we need the public broadcasters" to be generally disingenuous. Private companies will invest where there's a chance to m…

1) The public media web outlets I know do not publish in-depth articles like Spiegel/Zeit/Sueddeutsche. Yes, it makes sense that the public media change their focus as the to follow the focus of the population they serve.

2) Since the topic at hand is limited to Germany, I guess a look at other nations is an argument?

Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#436

Post by joe_the_user »

blueyes wrote: post #197
andrewtbham wrote: post #173

> it is not that the facts it reports tend to be inaccurate yes it is. I really lost faith in nyt when they ran article about running out of running out of charge in a Tesla. When they were caught red handed lying they still wouldn't admit to it. Their response was: "Problems With Precision and Judgment, but Not Integrity, in Tesla Test" They just don't get it. People are sick of their BS and they need to just comp t…

What does the author of this piece want? The "truth", or even a plausible interpretation of the facts, is expensive to produce. It is even more expensive when you do it every day covering a wide array of topics. If you value facts and good analysis, pay for them. It's that simple. Sure, the New York Times gets a lot of things wrong. So does everyone else, including many commenters on HN. * But a lot of what the New Y…

If you value facts and good analysis, pay for them. It's that simple. Sure, the New York Times gets a lot of things wrong. So does everyone else, including many commenters on HN.

Yeah, and "If you value your health, pay for an experience that doesn't spread a highly infectious disease". Oh, but just a few people willing to not spread the disease means you'll catch it any way.

The cost of the people who can't and won't afford the truth and choose lies instead is high for society, even for those who get the truth.

There are wide range of things that have degraded in the US based on the "if you value it, you will pay for it" ethos. This kind of reasoning works for the luxuriousness of an automobile - but even for the safety of an automobile.

Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#437

Post by JMTQp8lwXL »

symlinkk wrote: post #371
JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #268

Please get a library card if you wish to read quality (often paywalled) news sources for free. Your tax dollars (going to your city/county) are already paying for access. Best of all, it's digital. Your library card number will grant you huge access to all of this digitally and in near real time (e.g., the databases are updated daily).

Are you referring to digital scans or what? My library card doesn’t allow me to access nytimes.com.

The databases are separate web applications. Your username (and password) is your library ID card number, generally. When inside this site, you can search for publications (e.g., NY Times), and then filter by publication date (e.g., today), and view all of today's articles. It isn't access to NYTimes.com, but it's the same article contents accessed in a different way.

You may have used these databases in school to write research papers. Public libraries grant more or less the same access to similar/same databases, if you no longer are a member of an academic institution.

Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#438

Post by joe_the_user »

Dotnaught wrote: post #124

The linked article concludes: "Creators must be compensated well. But at the same time we have to try to keep things that are important and profound from getting locked away where few people will see them. The truth needs to be free and universal." Let's also consider whether lies should be made more expensive. Free costs more than it's worth.

Let's also consider whether lies should be made more expensive.

Whether lies should be more expensive or not, lies cannot be made expensive. Even in a totalitarian state, false rumors spread easily. The cost of production of lies is close to zero, the cost of distribution of lies also close to zero.

It's like all of HN is eager to apply an argument that makes sense for cheap, knock-off auto parts ("Cheap is too expensive", etc) to decent public journalism. It doesn't work.

Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#439

Post by JMTQp8lwXL »

mips_avatar wrote: post #403

Reminds me a lot of google's effort to create high-quality scans of every book ever written. They got pretty far before the publishers stopped them. They now sit on a sizeable percentage of all books published, locked away in their servers where nobody can access it.

It's not all for naught. Eventually the books will end up in the public domain, and if Google exists then, can choose to make scans public.

Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#440

Post by celtain »

schemy wrote: post #420
shadowgovt wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since the statement they're fact checking is "twice as much... than any other nation," averages don't apply; the smallest ratio is the strongest counterexample. Politicians can avoid being fact checked like this by using less absolute statements in their rhetoric.

They are also using exchange rate $ equivalent instead of PPP, the ratio then is 1.93 for the Netherlands to the US. This is a lie by the fact checkers. One that pushes an agenda that's obvious to see for everyone who cares to look.

The Netherlands PPP conversion factor is less than 1, and was in 2009 as well. This means that each Euro spent by the Netherlands goes further than the exchange rate equivalent number of dollars would go in the US.

Wouldn't adjusting for PPP bring their healthcare spending up, not down, making Sanders less correct, not more?

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