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That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

cybersect.substack.com

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Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#421

Post by moscoe »

levocardia wrote: post #379
gaoshan wrote: post #262

There is so much to address in this post but I want to look at just this part: "One of the reasons we know this story is bogus is because of the New York Times story which cites anonymous officials, “speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation”. That’s not a thing, that’s not a valid reason to grant anonymity under normal journalistic principles. It’s the “Washington Game” of “official…

Came here to post this. Haven't we learned many times in the last 5 years that, on average, "The Literal New York Times" is a better and more reliable source than "Some Guy on Substack"? Claiming that anonymous sources inside an agency/administration is "not a thing" clearly betrays the fact that this person knows nothing about actual journalism. Heck even a casual NYT reader will know that they cite anonymous source…

They do quote anonymous sources all the time, and, more often than not, those anonymous sources are leaking to the media to push their narrative, ie propaganda. The NYT is very clearly the puppet of washington insiders.

The “literal New York Times” doesn't exist anymore. This is not investigative journalism. This is just acting as the mouth piece for some anonymous government official.

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#422

Post by throwaway894345 »

eighthourblink wrote: post #318
oofbey wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree it’s healthy for Americans to be more skeptical of journalism, especially the sources they think they trust. But a key difference between NYT and Xinhua in China is that NYT explicitly doesn’t want to be duped. Sure reporters are lazy and will run an article quickly about a breaking story they get from a government tip. But if they find out it was wrong the editors will be pissed and likely print an update or…

which is fine and all but majority of people will take that first piece of news and not see the updated information / article piece. The damage is done at that point.

Sure, the damage is done, but that doesn't make it _propaganda_.

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#423

Post by snozolli »

Manuel_D wrote: post #345
manoDev wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Shouting down other people deprives them of their freedom of speech, and is rightfully prevented. Padilla was detained because he was attempting to do that: disrupt someone else from exercising speech. He could have made the exact same speech in his own space without consequences. If you disapprove of how Padilla was treated, that's fine, just be honest about why he was detained: not for the content of his speech, bu…

Interrupting or questioning people isn't a denial of first amendment rights. You're using extremely sloppy logic, mixing "freedom from interruption" with "freedom of speech".

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#424

Post by tracerbulletx »

nostrademons wrote: post #399
tracerbulletx wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't really believe your own senses either. Science is our only systematic way to arrive at reliable information, you really can't know anything, but you can construct reproduceable experiments that increase your confidence enough that those facts can be relied upon to construct more complex theories by linking experimental results together, and those links increase your confidence because their co-occurrences h…

Science relies on our senses too - that's all the data we get. But yes, science is a way of compensating for bias in our individual perception and building durable models that make useful predictions even for phenomena we can't directly perceive. Be wary of overgeneralizing scientific conclusions, though. Science may say that the measles vaccine is 99.7% effective, but if your kid comes down with a rash 3 days after…

Yes, also there's science the social system, and science the method. I'm only really speaking about the portion where senses are prone to a bunch of different failure modes, and science is a way to compile a bunch of sensory observations as a form of parity check or error correction mechanism. Science the social system also has failure modes, but the system is the only thing we have that has shown any actual progression in its results, and has a strong track record.

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#425

Post by throwaway894345 »

oofbey wrote: post #279
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?

I agree it’s healthy for Americans to be more skeptical of journalism, especially the sources they think they trust. But a key difference between NYT and Xinhua in China is that NYT explicitly doesn’t want to be duped. Sure reporters are lazy and will run an article quickly about a breaking story they get from a government tip. But if they find out it was wrong the editors will be pissed and likely print an update or…

Yes, when the Russian military was assembling outside of Ukraine, I was chatting with a lot of Russians on social media who were convinced (by their media) that it was just a normal drill, and that the Americans were just buying into their own government propaganda. Over the course of those conversations, Russians would say things like, "We know our media is propaganda, but you don't know that yours is just as propagandist". It was interesting that the goal of Russian propaganda wasn't to get Russians to believe that their media was infallible, but rather to get them to believe that there were no facts, that the truth was subjective, that every country's media was equally propagandist.

I saw a similar theme in right-wing American propaganda wherein American conservatives know that their media is biased, but they assume that "mainstream media" is just as bad.

It seems like in all of these cases, propagandists aren't trying to get people to believe the propaganda, but rather to discredit the entire idea of objective facts or reliable reporting.

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#426

Post by throwaway894345 »

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.

In a free country, people can publish whatever nonsense they want.

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#427

Post by istjohn »

levocardia wrote: post #379
gaoshan wrote: post #262

There is so much to address in this post but I want to look at just this part: "One of the reasons we know this story is bogus is because of the New York Times story which cites anonymous officials, “speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation”. That’s not a thing, that’s not a valid reason to grant anonymity under normal journalistic principles. It’s the “Washington Game” of “official…

Came here to post this. Haven't we learned many times in the last 5 years that, on average, "The Literal New York Times" is a better and more reliable source than "Some Guy on Substack"? Claiming that anonymous sources inside an agency/administration is "not a thing" clearly betrays the fact that this person knows nothing about actual journalism. Heck even a casual NYT reader will know that they cite anonymous source…

Both can be bad. The NYT absolutely publishes some slop from time to time, and I'm inclined to believe this is one such occasion. But this Substack essay isn't a measured correction and has its own mistruths and exaggerations. In other words, there's a middle ground between total credulity and solipsistic nihilism.

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#428

Post by Manuel_D »

snozolli wrote: post #423
Manuel_D wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shouting down other people deprives them of their freedom of speech, and is rightfully prevented. Padilla was detained because he was attempting to do that: disrupt someone else from exercising speech. He could have made the exact same speech in his own space without consequences. If you disapprove of how Padilla was treated, that's fine, just be honest about why he was detained: not for the content of his speech, bu…

Interrupting or questioning people isn't a denial of first amendment rights. You're using extremely sloppy logic, mixing "freedom from interruption" with "freedom of speech".

Absolutely, repeatedly interrupting people with questions can get you arrested. Go to a public commentary session at your local town hall. Exceed your allotted time period and keep questioning the officials. You'll eventually be arrested and taken away. Because in doing so, you're depriving the rest of the town from their opportunity to give a public comment.

There's nothing complicated about this. Padilla isn't being treated any differently from anyone else. Freedom of speech does not entail freedom to prevent others from speaking.

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#429

Post by istjohn »

chrononaut wrote: post #342
dragonwriter wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The journalists don't think they're writing these stories to amplify the police narrative (they think they're unbiased). They just don't have the judgement (or will?) to look beyond the initial narrative which is police-driven. No, they know what they are doing and you can tell they know what they are doing by the careful way language is used differently for similar facts when the police or other favored entities a…

> No, [journalists] know what they are doing ... Carefully calibrated, highly-selective use of (often, quite awkward) linguistic constructs does not happen unconsciously, it is a deliberate, knowing choice. The incredible vast majority of people in the world are acting in good faith. The way you are framing this is that nearly all journalists are acting in bad faith, which makes me believe the arguments of the parent…

> The incredible vast majority of people in the world are acting in good faith.

We have fundamentally different priors.

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#430

Post by hnlmorg »

abletonlive wrote: post #389
hnlmorg wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

> but the BBC is one of the most impartial sources available. I almost spit out my coffee in laughter reading this. Entirely ridiculous assertion. You are completely blind to the fact that the BBC is insanely partial by picking and choosing what it reports on and what it doesn't. This is just level 2 detection of bias that you aren't reaching, imagine all the other things you're missing.

You’d need to have literally infinite resources if you wanted to avoid a situation of having to pick and choose what you report on.

What matters is that all sides of the debate get representation. And the BBC does this almost to a fault.

The ironic thing is the fact that BBC is so good at doing this, everyone feels their voice is marginalised and then complains of bias.

So when people call the BBC “biased”, and as ferociously as you have, what they’re actually saying is “the BBC airs too many opinions that oppose my own biases”

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