The story seems to counter the popular view that BuzzFeed is low brow, low effort journalism. Did they have some kind of campaign to get better?
Blanked-out spots on China's maps helped us uncover Xinjiang's camps
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Re: Blanked-out spots on China's maps helped us uncover Xinjiang's camps
#12There are blank spots on western maps too, I can think of at least one [1] that isn't in Google maps. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviano_Air_Base
Not true -- https://www.google.com/maps/place/Aviano+Air+Base/@46.033364...
Ok, it has changed, it was just a blank space when I was driving around there in 2016.
Re: Blanked-out spots on China's maps helped us uncover Xinjiang's camps
#13interesting related read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restrictions_on_geographic_dat...
Re: Blanked-out spots on China's maps helped us uncover Xinjiang's camps
#14There are blank spots on western maps too, I can think of at least one [1] that isn't in Google maps. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviano_Air_Base
Wikipedia has a list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_satellite_map_images_w...
Re: Blanked-out spots on China's maps helped us uncover Xinjiang's camps
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not true -- https://www.google.com/maps/place/Aviano+Air+Base/@46.033364...
Try this one, I just noticed it while on vacation nearby: https://maps.app.goo.gl/ccm3ZcQ771mb6Jtj8 Edit sorry I can't link to satellite view from mobile. It's the Mola Fortress on Menorca.
In France, many military and nuclear facilities are also smoothed out in google maps. It seems a bit ridiculous since you can easily see public (free and paid) satellite images of the same places.
Re: Blanked-out spots on China's maps helped us uncover Xinjiang's camps
#16The story seems to counter the popular view that BuzzFeed is low brow, low effort journalism. Did they have some kind of campaign to get better?
buzzfeednews and buzzfeed are not the same thing.
Re: Blanked-out spots on China's maps helped us uncover Xinjiang's camps
#17The least the EU and US could do is sanction and ban Baidu and other Chinese tech companies responsible for covering up this genocide.
Re: Blanked-out spots on China's maps helped us uncover Xinjiang's camps
#18The story seems to counter the popular view that BuzzFeed is low brow, low effort journalism. Did they have some kind of campaign to get better?
Buzzfeed News has been doing good stuff for a long time.
Re: Blanked-out spots on China's maps helped us uncover Xinjiang's camps
#19Speaking of maps, I've always wondered what's in that huge, mostly-unlabeled region that is more than half of Russia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_Russia It looks like it could comfortably fit a few countries and then some. Even when watching history documentaries there's a period where Russia is basically a thin strip at the western edge of its current territory, before suddenly and inexplicably blowin…
Re: Blanked-out spots on China's maps helped us uncover Xinjiang's camps
#20The story seems to counter the popular view that BuzzFeed is low brow, low effort journalism. Did they have some kind of campaign to get better?
Buzzfeed does a lot of fluff ("You won't believe these 87 talking cats") plus decent, fairly well-regarded journalism (paid for by the fluff). This actually isn't that different to how normal papers operate; sports, gossip (called 'society' if the paper is sufficiently fancy) etc, bring in the money, with investigative journalism not exactly being a big earner. The difference is that Buzzfeed had the fluff before it did journalism.
Due to the travails of the news industry, there are currently a lot of good journalists and not a lot of jobs for them, so this sort of non-traditional route works. Teen Vogue is another example, arguably, though a less dramatic one; surprisingly good journalism in an outlet where you wouldn't traditionally expect journalism at all.