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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

#331

Post by dumbfounder »

whatamidoingyo wrote: post #208
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…

This reminded me of a YouTube clip I watched years ago. It was basically a retired KGB agent explaining how the media purposely puts out conflicting stories. This breaks the brain of the citizens, and they're unable to know what is true. We indeed see this here in the US. I can't tell you what is true or false (in media) objectively. I can choose what I want to believe is true, though.

I don’t think it’s some master scheme. They are trying to make money more than anything else. So they distort the truth to what sells the most. That just happens to be one of two major ideologies that hate each other. The effect is the same, but the motivations, and thus how you counteract, are different.

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#332

Post by IncreasePosts »

BlackFly wrote: post #180
stevage wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That’s not a thing, that’s not a valid reason to grant anonymity under normal journalistic principles Are they just making up these "normal journalistic principles"? I see different newspapers publishing quotes anonymously under similar conditions all the time.

The author explains it in the next sentence. > It’s the “Washington Game” of “official leaks”, disseminating propaganda without being held accountable. In general, you can spot this kind of propaganda by realizing that the anonymous source is actually promoting the government's position and so isn't actually in danger. I.E. they aren't a whistleblower, they have no reason to fear repercussions.

Wouldn't there be repercussions for discussing an ongoing investigation with a journalist?

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#335

Post by iphone_elegance »

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 fine but it's also the end of self-rule and agency

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#336

Post by NooneAtAll3 »

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 disagree about "the government pushing"

it's *different groups* of power - some have more control, some less

but all push one big agenda or the other, so instead of centralized propaganda you get affected by targetted propaganda

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#337

Post by dcow »

marcosdumay wrote: post #326
throwaway894345 wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would expect to see conflicting narratives in any country with free press. Why would we expect different outlets with different biases to run consistent narratives?

There should not be conflicting narratives on the press about things like if the COVID vaccines work or not, or if the disease kills people or not. Or if the world is warming.

Why not? Two reasonable people can disagree about the cause of some complex issue even without the media.

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#338

Post by herval »

potato3732842 wrote: post #252
herval wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's a distinction with A TON of difference. Well-functioning democracies have a push-and-pull that tends to slow things down BUT also prevents massive outreaches. Systems with tons of "sides" are stabler than dual systems because of this. > 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 s…

>it's a distinction with A TON of difference. Well-functioning democracies have a push-and-pull that tends to slow things down BUT also prevents massive outreaches. Systems with tons of "sides" are stabler than dual systems because of this. Right, a democracy won't succumb to one insane leader peddling particularly insane whims the way a dictatorship possibly can. But for the other 99/100 years of the century when th…

> But for the other 99/100 years of the century when things are business as usual it's a distinction without a difference.

"business as usual" under a totalitarian regime is slightly different from "business as usual" under a democratic regime. We have plenty of examples of both in the world right now. They're not equivalent...

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#340

Post by immibis »

rs186 wrote: post #128
chinathrow wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nothing they mentioned in the article is actually illegal. What about sending spam and threaths over one of these SIMs? I'm pretty sure that warrants legal action.

Have we actually established that they are used for sending spam? It's very likely, but the press release does not provide any evidence of that. All we know is that they could be used for spam.

And even if they are, if you provide a service and someone uses your service to send spam, that's not valid grounds for seizing all your equipment.
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