> They are literally there to ensure you get it wrong! They really are. They are part of the governance structure - they will not tell you the way out of this situation, or give you good information.

> Verify everything you accept as true

Hah... so, did you verify this stuff about MSM being a force to mislead?

The problem with the Internet nowadays is, it's already like a Library of Babel [0], if you want to have your views confirmed on anything, you can find someone saying "Yes, it's like that.".

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Library_of_Babel

> Hah... so, did you verify this stuff about MSM being a force to mislead?

Its obvious. If you look at what is presented, you are given lots of claims, but very few facts. Its just a load of evidence-free noise. What's to evaluate?!

Seriously, look a little deeper at almost any article. There is no actual information there. The question you should ask - critically - is how do I know this to be true? And if you don't know it to be true, why do you believe it to be true anyway?

UPDATE/EDIT

And, in other conspiracy news, I am unable to reply to comments below. "You're posting too fast. Please slow down. Thanks." This will probably prevent me from replying for a few hours (last time it was 3 hours). Understandably, people will think I'm flaky and unable to defend my position, where I am happy to have a meaningful interaction and share a different point of view.

Ask yourself, should I be able to say what I have said, in a free society? Did you think HN wasn't part of the problem?

I also get the "you're posting too fast" messages...

Sarcasm follows: But oooh yeah, it's a giant conspiracy, everyone's out to suppress your views!

If your views are aligned with what the echo chamber agrees with, you will be able to reply. If you do not get the echo chamber's approval, you are downvoted and cannot reply.

What's the conspiracy?! Its a fact.

But yes - it really does mean that my views are suppressed. I cannot reply to others as I would like.

Hmm, how do you differentiate between claims and facts? What are facts other than just things where you can verify? Where you can think "Ok, I agree that this is true". Like 2 + 2 = 4. We probably can both verify this, so that's a fact. How about e = mc2 ? Well, it's stood the test of time and many physics professors saying what it means, so to me this is also a fact. Same with the fact that the earth is spherical; but if you talk to a flat-earther, they'll start saying all sorts of nonsense (at least to me) because they don't believe the hundreds of years of research, and "want to see it for themselves", and what they "see" is that the earth is flat (because they have confirmation bias)

Yesterday MSM reported live as Trump supporters attacked the Capitol. I see that as factual information, there were thousands at a Trump rally nearby, presumably because they wanted to hear their leader talk; and nobody's said these people dispersed and a bunch of others came from the bushes...

The media also said "x thousand more people died due to Covid-19 yesterday", here I do have implicit trust that the reporting is correct, then again they're just reporting numbers from government agencies. TBH I'm not that invested in this that I need to proof whether the number is correct or not, but that's the thing isn't it; a Covid-denier wants to think Covid is a lie, and therefore the number of deaths is a lie, because there's something in it for them, maybe it's because their business is currently shut down and their bank account is being drained and they're going to lose their house and go hungry soon..

I've been reading a bit of Noam Chomsky this afternoon, not a person I'd agree with politically but many of his observations ring true regardless.

"The key element of social control is the strategy of distraction that is to divert public attention from important issues and changes decided by political and economic elites, through the technique of flood or flooding continuous distractions and insignificant information."

What is the benefit the governance structure derives from general misinformation on most topics? Governance is harder when people don't know things.

Think about it. If people have the wrong information, that means that they cannot respond meaningfully. If you are swimming in a world of lies, how will you give the correct answer?

UPDATE/EDIT

And, in other conspiracy news, I am unable to reply to comments below. "You're posting too fast. Please slow down. Thanks." This will probably prevent me from replying for a few hours (last time it was 3 hours). Understandably, people will think I'm flaky and unable to defend my position, where I am happy to have a meaningful interaction and share a different point of view.

Ask yourself, should I be able to say what I have said, in a free society? Did you think HN wasn't part of the problem?

If you're swimming in a world of lies, how do you feed yourself? Because not through government; they don't want that job.

What do you imagine government's goal to be? Especially in a country like the US where half the elected are trying to shrink it?

People believing lies led to a mob storming the US Congress. Do you think the goal of the people in government was to get lynched by a mob?

(I use hacker news because it is moderated. That's not part of the problem)

How do I feed myself? I don't know what you mean.

Government's goal is to implement whatever governance is decided to be best to manage people.

You say a mob stormed congress. I saw a dramatic event, that justifies a lot of authoritarian actions to be undertaken on others. Including de-platforming the president! Isn't that amazing?

Other dramatic events are perfectly fine, of course, such as the BLM protests.

Why is that? The answer for me is that some protests suit the governance agenda, and some don't. A message needs to be given to indicate rightthink and wrongthink.

I think you must believe that the government (lights, camera) 'action' you see on TV are far more than a simple soap opera intended to distract you. Perhaps you believe that one side is 'good' and the other 'bad'. If that's it, you are falling for the good cop/bad cop routine, and being sold down the river by both sides.

(I don't mind moderation - but what we have on HN is no room for free thinking, consensus opinion wins the day. Was I really posting too much, was I undertaking a DDOS attack? Or was my opinion, if reasoned, unpopular and not to be heard. Let me know.)

You got caught by the spam filter dude. No conspiracy here.

Its not a spam filter.

I am not posting too fast in trying to reply to responses.

The reason I am blocked is because my opinions are not popular and they are downvoted.

This is the issue: HN is an echo chamber. Those who can downvote (those with 500+ upvotes) can downvote others and maintain the echo chamber. A function of the design is to take away the right of reply from those whose opinion they do not like.

It is probably a spam filter, downvotes are an imperfect proxy for post quality. Tons of low quality posts is a form of spam. You don't have to be posting links to things you want to sell to be spamming.

No offense to you but typically there isn't a ton of value to someones posts that are repeatedly downvoted. They tend to be repetitive. I didn't look at yours so am not making a judgement on your statements but instead on others I have seen.

So an algorithm to slow down posts of that kind make sense even if it isn't perfect.

No one sees a post with a huge number of replies and assumes that since not every reply is replied back the person gave up. It is generally known that keeping up is hard when you are outnumbered.

You should keep that in mind and focus your efforts. If you get a bunch of replies focus on the upvoted ones first since then your reply will be more prominent as well. Ensure you aren't repeating your points, while some people carpet bomb replies most only do that when they are substantially similar.

On the topic of the post I replied to you got caught by several reasons for downvotes:

* Spreading a conspiracy. You emphatically say that those in power are lying. * Providing no evidence or even examples really. You have to back up extreme rhetoric with robust supporting evidence. You didn't provide any. * Bad place to make a stand. You chose to complain about overbearing tech companies on a topic about Twitter stopping people calling for the death of the VP. Direct calls for violence are agreed to be bad for everyone so using it as a jumping board for overbearing tech companies is a bad idea. * You finally used yourself as the example of overbearing tech companies. Never ever do this. You are incredibly biased about your own actions. You understand why you are taking them and give yourself immense benefit of the doubt. Using a literal spam filter as an example of what is wrong with tech because you personally got caught by it is a fundamentally flawed argument. You are incapable of reasonably inspecting the quality of your own posts.

Finally your original post is woefully ignorant. No one can know whether the election was stolen based on their own knowledge. No man is an island I believe is the phrase. The actual information required to prove that without a doubt is impossible to obtain. You need to have the data summarized to stand a chance. So by saying "acting on stuff that you don't know" after making it obvious you don't believe in secondary sources you are showing that you are making a fundamentally flawed argument.

:)

I appreciate you attempting to 'set me straight'. All the best.

We really need to slow down and examine our premises more carefully.

1. Gatekeepers (in this case, any media labeled "mainstream" and any popular social media corporation) exist to spread disinformation.

2. These gatekeepers are part of the government (or governance structure); they operate on the direction of the government.

3. They will not give you "good information." Any of them.

All of this to argue that President Donald Trump, perhaps arguably the most powerful man when acting President is speaking the truth about widespread election fraud, which - in 2016 would make him look better, as he claimed he won the popular vote, and in 2020 would preserve his position of power and influence over you.

To accept that lie, you need to believe that the vast majority of news outlets and social media corporations are all secretly conspiring, planning, communicating and executing alongside election officials, bipartisan judges, etc. and all at the behest of a "deep state" shadow government, but the only people that are willing to "admit" this exists are people that are Trump's biggest fans.

To me, it was always the case. I think TV was set up to be the most powerful propaganda delivery mechanism. That's pretty clear, when you look at how the BBC was created.

But - for more info, so that you can confirm this is explicitly the case, you should look up 'Operation Mockingbird'. Or the way that the CIA sponsored arts and culture.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/modern-art-was-cia-...

The media being part of governance is not a conspiracy.

UPDATE/EDIT

And, in other conspiracy news, I am unable to reply to comments below. "You're posting too fast. Please slow down. Thanks." This will probably prevent me from replying for a few hours (last time it was 3 hours). Understandably, people will think I'm flaky and unable to defend my position, where I am happy to have a meaningful interaction and share a different point of view.

Ask yourself, should I be able to say what I have said, in a free society? Did you think HN wasn't part of the problem?

> the CIA's secret campaign to turn American art into anti-Soviet cultural propaganda

This is perfectly credible. But extrapolating that example of government influence over culture to the premise "media is 100% under the control and direction of the government" or, furthermore, a hidden or shadow government... is stretching well beyond a logical conclusion. (It would have to be a shadow government, because mainstream media and social media were not going along with the Republicans led by Trump, when they were in power over several branches of the U.S. government.)

You need a lot more evidence to dispel the notion that this is "not a conspiracy."

What would you think if I said to you that there is a conspiracy so broad and deeply embedded that a small group is able to take a set co-ordinated actions, across the planet, with every country taking part that constrain individuals to their houses and restrict their movements and interactions, and to force individuals possibly at gunpoint to take injections that they object to? And that governments would be able to do so, with most cheering them on?

Is that a conspiracy? If I had said that to you last year, you would have called me mad.

Contrast that, with what would happen if you tried to prevent just one individual coming near you, even if they had provably caused you harm. You would need to go to court, prove your case, get a restraining order, etc. And you would never be able to exclude them from work, enforce a passport, mandate good citizen score for loans and travel!! Apparently none of the legal stuff is applicable if the whole world is being locked down. No one needs to go on the record to state why all this is required.

This is where we are at! Do you really want to trust CNN? lol