Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

CIA to Sunset the World Factbook

abc.net.au

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 279 posts

Re: CIA to Sunset the World Factbook

#71

Post by Sharlin »

ekianjo wrote: post #63
regenschutz wrote: post #26

Unfortunate. So many essays that I wrote in school cited The World Facebook as a source. I'm worried that the death of these easily accessible sources will push more and more pupils into relying on Wikipedia or even worse: AI. Being critical of what you see online and finding facts yourself is crucial to digital literacy.

> Unfortunate. So many essays that I wrote in school cited The World Facebook as a source. A source of propaganda? There's nothing the CIA does without political motivation.

The Factbook has always been widely regarded as a reliable source of information.

Re: CIA to Sunset the World Factbook

#72

Post by tw04 »

A shared knowledge of factual information is the enemy of a fascist state.

Not that that has anything to do with the current administration deciding to kill a useful apolitical resource that has served countless people for 80 years.

Re: CIA to Sunset the World Factbook

#73

Post by [deleted] »

mikemarsh wrote: post #54
biofox wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you forget the /s? Some people mentioned the dollar as the global reserve currency, but there's also the use of English as the global lingua franca, the US being the largest global destination for talent and investment, and countries (previous) willingness to make sacrifices or deal with the US on less-than-perfect terms out of a sense of shared culture.

Some people really do think of soft power, propaganda, shady covert operations, etc. as something "the other guys" do (China! KGB-Putin!), but assume the US is somehow above all that. Basically a neoconservative-esque sentimental view of the USA as "the good guys" on "the global stage" (although many would rightly recoil at the comparison to neocons).

[deleted]

Re: CIA to Sunset the World Factbook

#75

Post by toss1 »

Facts always create problems for authoritarian regimes.

So they do everything they can do get rid of facts.

The primary reason they spread disinformation is not to get people to believe the nonsense (which is merely an occasional bonus), it is to get people to give up on finding the truth. Once people have no substantial quantity or quality of truth, they can be entirely manipulated.

This regime is following the standard path to authoritarianism.

Re: CIA to Sunset the World Factbook

#76

Post by JKCalhoun »

davidguetta wrote: post #70
regenschutz wrote: post #26

Unfortunate. So many essays that I wrote in school cited The World Facebook as a source. I'm worried that the death of these easily accessible sources will push more and more pupils into relying on Wikipedia or even worse: AI. Being critical of what you see online and finding facts yourself is crucial to digital literacy.

[flagged]

I guess your sarcasm is not popular in this thread. Perhaps Musk-fatigue.

Re: CIA to Sunset the World Factbook

#78

Post by kergonath »

ekianjo wrote: post #63
regenschutz wrote: post #26

Unfortunate. So many essays that I wrote in school cited The World Facebook as a source. I'm worried that the death of these easily accessible sources will push more and more pupils into relying on Wikipedia or even worse: AI. Being critical of what you see online and finding facts yourself is crucial to digital literacy.

> Unfortunate. So many essays that I wrote in school cited The World Facebook as a source. A source of propaganda? There's nothing the CIA does without political motivation.

> There's nothing the CIA does without political motivation.

Even then, political motivation in itself does not make it inaccurate. It’s easy to see why a liberal democracy supposed to defend liberty across the globe would be interested in making facts accessible. Facts and education are the best way to fight obscurantism and totalitarianism. It’s also easy to see why a regime sliding back towards autocracy would have no interest in doing it. If they were competent, they could have continued pretending they cared and actually use it as a propaganda tool. Same with Radio Liberty and the others.

Re: CIA to Sunset the World Factbook

#80

Post by JKCalhoun »

simonw wrote: post #57
steviedotboston wrote: post #50

Since the world factbook was under the public domain, it would be possible for volunteers to build an archive site of it. It wouldn't be updated under the purview of the CIA but at least the most recent content would be easily accessible.

I have that up and running now for the 2020 edition: https://simonw.github.io/cia-world-factbook-2020 - repo here: https://github.com/simonw/cia-world-factbook-2020/ That was the last year they published it all in one convenient zip file. Serving 2026 requires a longer running scrape of the Internet Archive.

There I go, hoarding data again.

Thanks, stranger.

Post reply on HN