News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:WeChat and the Surveillance State by colordrops on Saturday June 08, 2019 @01:28PM (#20133709)
1.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird

https://theintercept.com/2018/01/03/my-life-as-a-new-york-ti...

https://theintercept.com/2014/09/04/former-l-times-reporter-...

http://www.carlbernstein.com/magazine_cia_and_media.php

https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-cia-and-the-media-50-facts...

2.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/04/facebook-advocates-go...

http://fortune.com/2018/05/17/facebook-atlantic-council-elec...

3 & 4.

There is an up swell in support for banning forms of speech and "dangerous ideas".

https://www.heritage.org/the-constitution/event/will-america...

https://www.vox.com/2019/3/4/18197209/free-speech-philosophy...

Corporations have been the ones to do most of the censorship at the moment:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deplatforming

But there isn't much difference between corporations and the government in the US at the moment:

https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military%E2%80%93industrial_co...

https://www.newsweek.com/assange-google-not-what-it-seems-27...

What it boils down to is that the narrative of the US is that we are "free" and a "democracy", so the powerful must use more subtle and subversive techniques to achieve the same goals as autocrats elsewhere such as China.

Don't get me wrong, the US is still better than China on this front, but my response is simply to say that it's not so binary.

Re:WeChat and the Surveillance State by idlewords on Saturday June 08, 2019 @01:47PM (#20133860)
Please use your words next time, not a random dump of links you found compelling.
Re:WeChat and the Surveillance State by colordrops on Saturday June 08, 2019 @01:58PM (#20133940)
I've used my words many times and all that ever happens is that I get shouted down or called a conspiracy theorist, so I decided to lead with evidence directly responding to the OP's points, and then follow with words. Did you not see those?
Re:WeChat and the Surveillance State by idlewords on Saturday June 08, 2019 @04:13PM (#20134856)
If you frequently get called a conspiracy theorist it's most likely because... you're a conspiracy theorist. Like, you claim in some of your posts that NPR is a mouthpiece for Lockheed Martin, and that Jeff Bezos decides what the Washington Post will print.

Now, maybe those conspiracies are real, and you're seeing something the rest of us are too blind (or too deep in the pockets of Deep Hacker) to see. But then you have to work extra hard to build the case and persuade, with a cogent narrative. That requires a lot of work! It's not very fair. But it's the only way you're going to get people to listen to you, if that is an outcome you want.

Re:WeChat and the Surveillance State by komali2 on Saturday June 08, 2019 @02:25PM (#20134125)
Then your arguments weren't convincing, which I sympathize as being very frustrating.

Certainly this approach was likely far less convincing - I feel no motivation whatsoever to click a bunch of random links having no idea their content. Furthermore, should I do so, I may arrive at a very different conclusion than you intend. I do give you props for coming to the table with so many sources, whether they're quality or not I have no idea.

Re:WeChat and the Surveillance State by depr on Saturday June 08, 2019 @07:14PM (#20135822)
The links are fine, they lead to words.