CommieGIR posted:

Corky Romanovsky posted:

The next post will downgrade the qualifier to "potentially". Stop the gishgallop and cite the false documents.

quote:

Citizen Lab started their probe with a "patient zero": David Satter, a prominent journalist and Kremlin critic. On October 7th 2016, Satter was targeted by a self-proclaimed pro-Russian hacktivist group known as Cyber Berkut, which pilfered his emails in much the same way as Fancy Bear compromised Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. They sent phishing emails that appeared to come from Google asking Satter to change his password, but as soon as he visited the link included in the faked message and entered his login details, his account was effectively in the hands of the hackers.

Those emails were then "selectively modified" by Cyber Berkut before being published online, Citizen Lab wrote in its report released Thursday. Those "tainted leaks" contained both real and faked communications. Amongst the tampered-with messages was a report sent by Satter to the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a U.S. non-profit promoting democracy across the world. It was altered in such a way as to make it appear Satter was paying Russian journalists to write articles damning of the Russian regime.

The real report focused on the work of Radio Liberty, a U.S.-government sponsored station that broadcasts news into Russia. But the surreptitious edits removed mentions of Radio Liberty, replacing them with general statements to make it appear Satter was supporting a larger operation, while adding articles from other sources that were never in the original document. Crucially, amongst the added articles were some penned by or including Alexei Navalny, a prominent Russian anti-corruption activist and opposition, focusing on corruption. "By repeatedly adding his reporting to the document, the tainting creates the appearance of 'foreign' funding for his work," Citizen Lab wrote.

Probably Magic posted:

Not even Hillary Clinton went so far as to say the leaks were faked during the Trump-Clinton, using noncommittal language like, "And we don't even know if the information in these leaks were real," instead of committing to them being fake or not, seeding doubt without going on the record disproving them, so interesting how we now have takes that go further than the targets of the leak herself.

Probably Magic posted:

Not even Hillary Clinton went so far as to say the leaks were faked during the Trump-Clinton, using noncommittal language like, "And we don't even know if the information in these leaks were real," instead of committing to them being fake or not, seeding doubt without going on the record disproving them, so interesting how we now have takes that go further than the targets of the leak herself.

Probably Magic posted:

But it ends up being the same level of "innuendo without saying anything." If it can be proven these Cyber Berkut lied, it should be able to be replicated and say Fancy Bear lied too, which would be a more direct accusation. Instead, we get a lot of text about how Cyber Berkut and Fancy Bear may have extracted information in similar ways and similar websites, which is bunch of innuendo without just saying, concretely, "And here's an example of Fancy Bear lying." It's just a bunch of "you can connect the dots," the same way Hillary was doing, but after watching entire wars started on the premise of connect the dots that ended up false, no, show me the money.

CommieGIR posted:

The problem is, as you well know, that the leaks were largely used to grab snippets that could be drummed up to be worse that they sounded by being taken out of context. And Assange knew that would be done. Don't exactly know what we're defending here, its not Hillary Clinton for sure, but the idea that Assange is useful as a a source of info past maybe the Afghanistan leaks when it became clear he was going to use the media provided as his personal tools, maybe we should've been more skeptical of his end goals.

The Kingfish posted:

Your position is that there was nothing “useful” in the DNC/State Department leaks?

CommieGIR posted:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2017/05/26/russian-dnc-hackers-planted-leaks-with-fake-data/?sh=6c10f98b52ff

The Kingfish posted:

Well what exactly are you saying then? How is Assange/Wikileaks not a useful source of information post-Afghanistan Papers if there is still useful information coming out of Wikileaks?

quote:

Several Republicans who had once been highly critical of WikiLeaks and Julian Assange began to speak fondly of him after WikiLeaks published the DNC leaks and started to regularly criticise Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party.[414][415] Having called WikiLeaks "disgraceful" in 2010, President-Elect Donald Trump praised WikiLeaks in October 2016, saying, "I love WikiLeaks."[416][417] In 2019, Trump said "I know nothing about WikiLeaks. It’s not my thing."[418] Newt Gingrich, who called for Assange to be "treated as an enemy combatant" in 2010, praised him as a "down to Earth, straight forward interviewee" in 2017.[414] Sean Hannity, who had in 2010 said that Assange waged a "war" on the United States, praised him in 2016 for showing "how corrupt, dishonest and phony our government is".[415] Sarah Palin, who had in 2010 described Assange as an "anti-American operative with blood on his hands", praised Assange in 2017.[419]

quote:

Assange has a habit of releasing documents that had actual legitimate reasons for being concealed—and, in doing so, endangered groups of already-vulnerable people in the name of "transparency":

For some unknowable reason, he decided to release a document containing highly sensitive information on the last Jews living in Baghdad, where they are living in perpetual fear for their lives.
After a Turkish writer called them out for dumping private conversations of Turkish citizens, WL called her a "Erdogan apologist" and said that she was fabricating her story.[67]
Assange has proposed using WikiLeaks to track down and "verify" the home address, family members, and banking information of Twitter users—to authenticate them. What better way to hand power to the people than by doxing your enemies?[68]
WikiLeaks accused Snowden of trying to curry favors from Clinton when Snowden criticized them for not sanitizing their leaks.[69] During an interview on Real Time, Assange's response was, "Edward Snowden hasn’t published anything in three years. He did one thing. It was a very important thing, and it was in fact so important that I and this organization saved his rear end by rescuing him from Hong Kong...I think he should remember that."[70] So he needs to be your submissive lackey? (Assange also accused Bill Maher of donating a million dollars to HRC's campaign on live television, and had to walk it back because he made it up on the spot.)

CommieGIR posted:

Past that point its broken clock whether the data is good or not. The question, is Wikileaks out to provide raw information or does Assange's personal agenda get in the way? Given that Assange went full accelerationist in arguing defeating Clinton and ensuring Trump gained an upper hand in the election, would you argue that he is an unbiased source of information? (Worth noting I'm not arguing Clinton was a good candidate, only whether Assange has personal reasons to ensure she failed).



Is this really the guy you want to argue is some unbiased source of info that can be safely taken without context?
Oh man, remember when David Duke praised him for the DNC leaks? Good times. The problem is that Assange, while a provider of useful info, also has used it as a tit-for-tat arrangement to get things he wants, and withheld some info while dumping info that looked suspicious given its timing.

The Kingfish posted:

This is the Media Analysis and Criticism thread. I’m not going to argue anybody is an unbiased source of info that can be safely taken without context. Would you?

piL posted:

Wikileaks implications that Podesta was getting freaky with jizz, blood and breastmilk probably aren't accurate, but also it may be appropriate to conceptually separate WL twitter from WL proper.

quote:

A core issue with many people’s approach to media literacy is they think of it as finding a single, true lens through which to understand information and the world- a rule or worldview or rubric that they can use to decide what sources are good or bad. This is often couched in the language of universal skepticism, or seeing through the “mainstream media.” “I’m skeptical of every source” and "all media is biased" is bullshit. No one can be skeptical of every source equally, and all too often it means rejecting good sources that are just communicating challenging or unappealing information. Taking these positions actually makes a person even more vulnerable to disinformation, because disinfo campaigns actively target such individuals and prey upon their biases. The Intercept article I cited above OANN will both tell you- they will give you the stories no one else will.

Similarly, a single theory (including, or even especially, “crit” theories that provide an overarching narrative telling you what sources are good or bad) will instead steer you toward messages that appeal to you for all the wrong reasons. There’s a reason these posts are a bunch of material pulled from different sources- a toolkit will make you much more intellectually versatile than a single mythological correct way to understand media.

Discendo Vox posted:

Nah, we already spent several pages shutting down this sort of self-serving equivocation. It is, in fact, a whataboutism, and it's a nonsensical one at that. Known misinformation as a product of a foreign power's intelligence apparatus is not the equivalent of the "American media," that you are just...asserting is ambiguously categorically biased by the military industrial complex.

From the OP:

Discendo Vox posted:

Nah, we already spent several pages shutting down this sort of self-serving equivocation. It is, in fact, a whataboutism, and it's a nonsensical one at that. Known misinformation as a product of a foreign power's intelligence apparatus is not the equivalent of the "American media," that you are just...asserting is ambiguously categorically biased by the military industrial complex.

From the OP:

Nucleic Acids posted:

Why should anyone trust Wikileaks “critics” who have their own obvious motivations , in part by trying to make it all about Assange while ignoring how the case against him is collapsing?

quote:

In March 2015, after public criticism from other Swedish law practitioners, Ny changed her mind about interrogating Assange, who had taken refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.[187] These interviews, which began on 14 November 2016, involved the British police, Swedish prosecutors and Ecuadorian officials, and were eventually published online.[188] By that time, the statute of limitations had expired on all three of the less serious allegations. Since the Swedish prosecutor had not interviewed Assange by 18 August 2015, the questioning pertained only to the open investigation of "lesser degree rape".[189][190][181][191]

On 19 May 2017, the Swedish authorities suspended their investigation, saying they could not expect the Ecuadorian Embassy to communicate reliably with Assange with respect to the case. Chief prosecutor Marianne Ny officially revoked his arrest warrant, but said the investigation could still be resumed if Assange visited Sweden before August 2020.[192][193][194]

Following Assange's arrest on 11 April 2019, the case was reopened, in May 2019, under prosecutor Eva-Marie Persson.[195] On 19 November, she announced that she had discontinued her investigation, saying that the evidence was not strong enough. She added that although she was confident in the complainant, "the evidence has weakened considerably due to the long period of time that has elapsed"

Discendo Vox posted:

Nah, we already spent several pages shutting down this sort of self-serving equivocation. It is, in fact, a whataboutism, and it's a nonsensical one at that. Known misinformation as a product of a foreign power's intelligence apparatus is not the equivalent of the "American media," that you are just...asserting is ambiguously categorically biased by the military industrial complex.

From the OP:

Probably Magic posted:

You're not doing media criticism, you're doing xenophobia.

Probably Magic posted:

I've never argued there's a single true lens, case in point why I said it's hard to judge Assange because he himself sucks as a person. But you saying that the American media is not biased towards the military industrial complex just ignores history likes Operation Mockingbird but also just ignores the really obvious evidence of so many contributors to American media being, well, military people. The American media has been arguing for wars since at the Spanish-American War, this should be a neutral take at best. We just had a president who would get nonstop negative coverage that only took a break when he would drone strike Syria, at which point he "finally became president." The New York Times got us into Iraq, for god's sakes. When Facebook initially set up its fact checkers, they made sure to add the Weekly Standard to otherwise reputable agencies like Reuters and AP because it was so important for a war propagandist like Bill Kristol to have a say in sifting through information. Denying the relationship between the military and the American media makes all this handwringing about Russian influence absolutely dead. You're not doing media criticism, you're doing xenophobia.

HelloSailorSign posted:

And that's an absolutely massive leap to take. Criticism of the United States is not seen as being anti-American (unless you're Republican but they're not relevant here), much the same as criticism of Russia is not being racist against Russians nor xenophobia.

The point of a bad source putting out correct information is because if they only put out incorrect information, they'd be an easily falsifiable source. The whole point is to put a vast majority of correct stuff with some extra bits that help to push their readers towards the desired endpoint. They're all long cons at that point, much like right wing media has been in the US.

Probably Magic posted:

Discendo Vox saying we need to be wary of Russian influence but not American influence is,

Vincent Van Goatse posted:

He hasn't actually said this anywhere except in your imagination.

HelloSailorSign posted:

Assange is a crappy person all by himself (that poor cat), but getting his source material basically from Russian Intelligence Services means that you can have two points where there could be gross levels of information modification in order to launder completely false statements into black market facts. That Assange provided correct information in some places does not make the rest of the information valuable or good, and given how it's basically turned into a HIM show with Wikileaks falling so far should suggest that Assange is an unreliable or easily manipulated mediator at best if not outright attempting to fabricate information himself.

Probably Magic posted:

Saying the media is not biased by the military-industrial complex is, in fact, saying that.

Mooseontheloose posted:

I think the contention here is that people don't want to believe that they are susceptible to media manipulation or their own biases. If you believe that inherently anything the US does is not trustworthy than a source saying yep, here is something to prove your point means you are more likely to believe it. That's what happened in 2016. Wikileaks had a lot of goodwill in certain circles because of the information they were leaking. They go against American hegemony and orthodoxy, they are to be believed and trusted.

Assange cast his lot with the Alex Jones and Trump types in 2016 but he "believes" the same things you do. Hilary Clinton bad, US bad, therefore Assange has no reason to lie or influence the election. It conforms to your belief system, you'd never be vulnerable to that type of manipulation, so your bias creeps in and you find ways to defend it. We see it with conservatives all the time but we as humans have the same bias issues.

Ciprian Maricon posted:

It's a bad story I guess and I'm deeply sorry for derailing the breakneck pace of discussion here. It resonated with my experience as an immigrant. Congrats though, you've successfully defended the needlessly cruel immigration apparatus of the United States, maybe you should think carefully about why you're interested in doing that before posting here.

Probably Magic posted:

It's Forbes getting quoted in this argument, not some critically applauded independent media darling. Come on.

Probably Magic posted:

My only real experience with this thread before yesterday was seeing Discendo Vox go on and on about how Thomas Frank was being too emotional in his descriptions of liberalism but also demanding that Frank make sure to note how "monstrous" Donald Trump was, and that really didn't sell me on the conceit of this thread very well, and it's still hasn't. I only responded because I think saying, "This whistleblower's motivations aren't pure enough," is a really scary way to treat whistleblowing in the future.

Discendo Vox posted:

Entities like Wikileaks are not whistleblowers, they are mediators of information, some of which may come from whistleblowers. I did not critique Frank for being "too emotional in his descriptions of liberalism", I critiqued what appears to be deliberately selective and dishonest framing of information intended to appeal to the prior beliefs of his target audience.