Re:Wikileaks: Julian Assange's internet access 'cut'
by acdha on Tuesday October 18, 2016 @08:42AM
(#12733808)
Just to start with, remember when Wikileaks doxed millions of ordinary Turkish citizens falsely claiming they were secret documents about the ruling party?
Whatever you may believe about their actions in the past, they don't appear to be checking before publishing much now and that means it's on the reader to look for confirmation rather than credulously assuming nobody would lie about matters of political importance.
In this case, we've already seen that cycle with the Guccifer documents being heavily cross-promoted by Russian state media and Wikileaks but showing many signs of modification and misrepresentation (e.g. the alleged Clinton Foundation documents which didn't hold up to non-casual examination).
That doesn't mean that Wikileaks might not have real data but it definitely shows that anyone who isn't just looking for propaganda should take time to investigate rather than assuming they're legitimate or correctly summarized.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/zeynep-tufekci/wikileaks-erdog...
Whatever you may believe about their actions in the past, they don't appear to be checking before publishing much now and that means it's on the reader to look for confirmation rather than credulously assuming nobody would lie about matters of political importance.
In this case, we've already seen that cycle with the Guccifer documents being heavily cross-promoted by Russian state media and Wikileaks but showing many signs of modification and misrepresentation (e.g. the alleged Clinton Foundation documents which didn't hold up to non-casual examination).
That doesn't mean that Wikileaks might not have real data but it definitely shows that anyone who isn't just looking for propaganda should take time to investigate rather than assuming they're legitimate or correctly summarized.