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That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

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Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#211

Post by palmotea »

r3trohack3r wrote: post #179
alansammarone wrote: post #41

I felt slightly...hm...confused when reading this. When I see something in the news, to the degree that I trust the source, I see it only as a statement of fact, and unless I trust the commentator, I ignore the comment. I only expect descriptive accuracy from the news. This sometimes requires resources that individuals don't generally have. When I read a personal blog article articulating a personal opinion, presenti…

I believe the kind of journalism you’re hinting at is practically dead in what many people are referring to when they say “the news.” It’s hard to determine if I agree with your stance though since you didn’t actually define what you meant by news organizations; mind listing a few of your favorite sources of news and trusted commentators? If they’re quite good, it’ll help people find reliable sources of descriptive a…

> I think we are going to see an increasing trend of “true journalists” leaving the legacy news industry to places where they can build direct relationships with their audience, can own their own content distribution channels, and directly monetize those channels. I.E. Substack, YouTube, X, et. al.

Those independent channels seem far more amenable to "opinion-havers" than "true journalists" (though perhaps the "true journalists" transform into opinion-havers or secondhand-analysts when they change distribution platforms).

> ...churn out low effort AP ticker derivatives, social media gossip, and literal government propaganda from The Party whispered in their ear by an “anonymous source.”

That stuff is cheap. How do you expect someone moving to a place of fewer resources and less security to make a more expensive product?

> The “news rooms” appear devoid of any real journalistic integrity.

I think you're seeing the result of budget cuts.

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#212

Post by tootie »

roody15 wrote: post #98

Once a Chinese grad student explained to me a difference he noted between Chinese and American citizens. He said in China no really reads or watches 24/7 major news outlets in China. They are fully aware that all of it is propaganda and just go about their life. He said Americans seem to get really emotional over content in the press and seem to really struggle with the idea of propaganda / journalism in the news. I…

That's a ridiculous statement and honestly this blog post itself is very misleading. The quote taken on condition of anonymity is someone saying there is no evidence this was a national security threat. The NYT article is not at all a hair on fire credulous tale of near disaster. It quotes government officials and experts, connects it to "normal" criminal cartels and offers some opinions on what could be a worst case scenario. As much as this could easily be a simple criminal case, it was already connected to threats made to politicians so it's not far-fetched.

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#213

Post by ceejayoz »

viggity wrote: post #207
ceejayoz wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some cases, yes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disciplinary_actions_for_comme... > Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that any non-citizens who celebrated Kirk's death would be immediately deported… > Attorney General Pam Bondi indicated on Katie Miller's podcast and in subsequent Department of Justice announcements that she intended to "target" speech against Kirk following his death as hate speech… Plus te…

[flagged]

Except people are often being fired for quoting Charlie Kirk verbatim.

The First Amendment doesn't apply to only citizens.

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#214

Post by potato3732842 »

stetrain wrote: post #141
roody15 wrote: post #98

Once a Chinese grad student explained to me a difference he noted between Chinese and American citizens. He said in China no really reads or watches 24/7 major news outlets in China. They are fully aware that all of it is propaganda and just go about their life. He said Americans seem to get really emotional over content in the press and seem to really struggle with the idea of propaganda / journalism in the news. I…

I think treating the government as a singular entity pushing a narrative is missing a bit. There is no singular government moving in lock-step, I think we've seen a lot of those seams showing recently. There are factions, supported by various wealthy powerful interests. Those factions include people in government but also people funding or controlling media. The owner and CEO of a major social network was literally g…

Sure, it's a bunch of silos made up of sub-silos with people with their own goals.

But, I have far too often seen this "the government isn't a monolith" assertion used in the most deceitful, dishonest irredeemably bad faith arguments here on HN (and other parts of the internet as well) to shut down discussion of cases where some subset of the government is doing things that are bad for it's own selfish reasons.

Ditto for the "they're not literally conspiring" assertion used to shut down discussion of cases of where interests align and no conspiring or active coordinate is needed to achieve the results.

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#215

Post by stogot »

ynniv wrote: post #151
alansammarone wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I think I agree with most of what you're saying, I think it can be misunderstood and it can be very damaging when taken to an extreme, so I'll just leave a quote from the absolutely fantastic 20 lessons from the 20th century by Timothy Snyder: > Believe in truth. To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so. If nothing…

[flagged]

relativism is indeed wrong, but thinking that because knowing the truth is somehow “hard”, that you should throw out objectivism is also wrong.

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#216

Post by whatsupdog »

hnlmorg wrote: post #193
fidotron wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The important point is to distinguish between truth and the co-ordinated release of information in the NYT, BBC etc. The latter is very much intended to send a message, but it is not to be taken as literal truth.

I cannot about the NYT, but the BBC is one of the most impartial sources available. So much so that the left and the right accuse the BBC of biasing the other in equal measures! If you want to talk about bias in the UK press then you’re better off looking towards The Sun, The Mail and anything owned by Murdoch (that guy has done so much damage to the world it’s unreal).

> BBC is one of the most impartial sources available.

I really hope that is sarcasm. BBC is highly skewed to the left. No debate on that. Can you show me any story on BBC that is biased to the right?

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#217

Post by phkahler »

alansammarone wrote: post #103
roody15 wrote: post #98

Once a Chinese grad student explained to me a difference he noted between Chinese and American citizens. He said in China no really reads or watches 24/7 major news outlets in China. They are fully aware that all of it is propaganda and just go about their life. He said Americans seem to get really emotional over content in the press and seem to really struggle with the idea of propaganda / journalism in the news. I…

While I think I agree with most of what you're saying, I think it can be misunderstood and it can be very damaging when taken to an extreme, so I'll just leave a quote from the absolutely fantastic 20 lessons from the 20th century by Timothy Snyder: > Believe in truth. To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so. If nothing…

>> Believe in truth. To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so.

That means every time the press says something about what Trump did, you have to find a direct quote or video of him saying it. Or read an actual executive order. The media abandons facts to criticize power they don't like.

During covid the Governor of Michigan banned shopping for gardening supplies. This raised a big fuss. One of my FB friends shared a reporters story saying the ban was fake news and that the order did not include anything like that. He even provided a link directly to the order itself so you could see for yourself. Most people would not bother because hey, he went to the source! I followed the link, found the paragraph - which was super clear and explicit about the gardening thing - and posted a direct quote of it in response. I lost a FB friend that day. Facts are hard to find (you must do it yourself) and just piss people off when they don't like them.

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#218

Post by potato3732842 »

herval wrote: post #159
stetrain wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think treating the government as a singular entity pushing a narrative is missing a bit. There is no singular government moving in lock-step, I think we've seen a lot of those seams showing recently. There are factions, supported by various wealthy powerful interests. Those factions include people in government but also people funding or controlling media. The owner and CEO of a major social network was literally g…

This is true in a _well functioning democratic government_ - by design: as long as there are differences, a single actor cannot take over. Understanding that the media is owned by powerful people, and people have agendas, is a key point to media literacy that should be taught at schools. It doesn't mean media should be ignored, nor that they always aim to manipulate (with some exceptions). It's, again, healthy if you…

>a single actor cannot take over.

This is a distinction without a difference. People can screech about "we're a democracy, we don't have a king" all they want but if the overwhelming amount of discretionary authority in the system is held by a fairly small group of people cut from approximately the same cloth it doesn't really matter, they're all gonna decide things the same ways and the results are gonna be just as divorced from what people want.

It doesn't matter if you have a thousand people working to appease the ideological whims of one absolute ruler or a thousand people with the same set of ideological whims, it's still one set of ideological whims being worked towards.

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#220

Post by disiplus »

notatoad wrote: post #74
alansammarone wrote: post #41

I felt slightly...hm...confused when reading this. When I see something in the news, to the degree that I trust the source, I see it only as a statement of fact, and unless I trust the commentator, I ignore the comment. I only expect descriptive accuracy from the news. This sometimes requires resources that individuals don't generally have. When I read a personal blog article articulating a personal opinion, presenti…

I think, the more extraordinary the claim is, the more proof is required. And I’m with you, I’d normally be incredibly skeptical of a substack post from an author I’ve never heard of before, who writes as egotistically as this. But there is just no extraordinary claim in this article. Only a very very ordinary claim that should be believable to any person who has ever owned a cell phone: SIM farms are normal, common…

yeah, like you go on alibaba and can get them right away. i was even thinking about them like 10 years ago when we had to send transactional sms to our customers to get one instead of paying for somebodies sms gateway.

https://www.made-in-china.com/showroom/faf448fd0d906a15/prod...

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