trasz3

Emission checks for EVs?

>It’s interesting to me that they continue to spawn and nix products like this despite the reputation damage it causes.

I guess this means a "reputation" doesn't influence their profits. Some companies aren't in impression-making business, or even pretending-to-be-trying-to-make-their-customers-happy business.

So why is it hosted in Germany and not, say, China?

Anything related to crypto/blockchain tends to be a technically very poor way of doing decentralisation.

>Government-sponsored was not a US propaganda badge, it was a response to a serious concern about adversarial governments

For most people USA is an adversarial government. You've just confirmed it was a propaganda badge meaning "unamerican".

Yes. I your car catches fire when parked, you probably want to grab a fire extinguisher instead of complaining, even though it's not technically your fault.

And look how effective that was.

So, does it? xD

Well, your state is waging a genocidal war of aggression against European state and is losing. It's not supposed to be comfortable.

Although I feel you. I don't think (most) Russian citizens should bear personal responsibility for the invasion, same way US citizens were never held responsible for Middle East.

s/employing/led by/. Yeah, pretty much.

So here's where we disagree: to me, any institution led by Medvedev won't be independent; funding formalities don't matter at all.

Also, once again: there's a fundamental difference between "used to work" and "was a CEO".

Oh, definitely; it could be based on literally anything, or just effectively random. But it doesn't change my view of whether the outcome is positive or not.

So if it was instead registered as a private company, with, say, Medvedev as CEO, it would be fine?

And there is a way out. And there's been for over a year now.

No, my argument is that an institution managed by past government officials cannot be unironically called independent from said government.

"Russia Today hired its CEO, Ivan Muchosranov, away from Russian People's Propaganda Bureau; selected by RT's independent corporate board"

xD

Have you ever considered the possible difference between what's officially allowed and what's actually happening?

Nowadays, when information is abundant, individual stories don't matter all that much; what does matter is building the overall narrative. Allowing critical stories doesn't affect that.

There's a subtle difference between "working with" and being the CEO.

>Musk's eye of Sauron fell upon NPR--and only NPR, not Deutsche Welle or Radio France or CBC or BBC

Well, sure, but you gotta start somewhere. At least this is a move in the right direction; let's hope for similar labelling for other media that deserve it.

I don't care about Lensing's bio, or even him as a person. What matters is, ex-propaganda (protip: https://www.wordnik.com/words/propaganda) bureau head is now leading NPR, an allegedly independent institution. Imagine what you wrote above but substituting China for US.

>The government doesn't have any editorial control of NPR.

Yeah, it's not like the government literally put their own guy as NPRs CEO: https://www.usagm.gov/who-we-are/management-team/john-lansin...

Editorial independence in action: https://www.usagm.gov/who-we-are/management-team/john-lansin...

It's not just that it's state-funded - NPR's CEO got there after years of heading the relevant US government propaganda agency, as evidenced in https://www.usagm.gov/who-we-are/management-team/john-lansin....

Except this is a pure marketing talk, ie this phrase literally doesn't mean anything quantifiable. Unless you're trying to argue that NPR's CEO, which came directly from US government propaganda agency, maintains "editorial independence" in some magic, American-specific way.

Or imagine all those poor Germans in 1940s who just wanted to visit a football match of pay bills. Same situation here.

Truth hurts, I suppose? Or are you going to argue with a straight face that the fact that NPRs CEO came directly from US government propaganda bureau doesn't prove the new labeling correct?

Yeah, it's not like their CEO came directly from the relevant government bureau, right?

I'm not a fan of Elon (or most companies, for that matter), but this was the right thing to do. Previously the "government-sponsored" badge was nothing more than US propaganda.

You can use whatever you want, sanctions don’t affect that. What you can’t do is paying money to sanctioned entities.

This is one of the reasons why we need Open Source infrastructure in countries that are not controlled by media owners.