|
Nix Panicus posted:It is nice to have the resident pedant outright admit the range of allowable discourse is entirely at the moderator's discretion. Nix Panicus posted:You're still asserting without evidence that the leaks were doctored and do not accurately represent the internal workings of the DNC, but you are using a whole lot of words to do it. The message is not the same as the mediator, and what you want to believe about the message does not remove you from an obligation to consider the mediator. Just because you want to believe the content of the message does not mean you do not consider its source and how it may influence the message. Nix Panicus posted:Why is Russia's history of lying about information more relevant than the DNC's history of lying about information here? Specific attributes of the the mediating sources of the information have been provided, including a pattern of selective representation and timed distribution, as well as a past pattern of altering mediated information. "Russia bad" has never been the root argument here. I mean, c'mon, I wasn't even the person who was originally talking about this. Scroll up and read. Nix Panicus posted:Why are *you* not examining your biases? If you agree with something, look harder. I put it to you that *you* are the one beholden to your own biases and choosing what to believe based on what feels comfortable to you I am not the user arguing against the ideas of either a discussion based in critical thought about sources of information, or the idea of moderation generally.
|
#
?
Oct 10, 2021 22:46
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 23, 2024 12:41 |
|
|
Nix you're not responding to arguments that people are actually making, and clearly trying to lay performative zingers on people. Don't post in this thread again.
|
|
#
?
Oct 10, 2021 23:05
|
|
|
I'm just going to say right now that my surety of the details of the moon landings would be far different if the only primary source was a set of text logs released by a third party, which the US government had strong motivation to neither confirm nor deny. Even if it all seemed to line up and I generally believed it.
|
|
#
?
Oct 10, 2021 23:40
|
|
|
I’m starting to lose track. Is this an argument between people who think the DNC leaks were accurate and those who don’t? Are there posters here who believe that inflammatory emails from that set of leaks were fabricated by Wikileaks/Russian intelligence? E: I do think this is an interesting topic of discussion for the thread and relevant as an application of the principles of media analysis. The Kingfish fucked around with this message at 00:36 on Oct 11, 2021 |
|
#
?
Oct 11, 2021 00:31
|
|
|
Killer robot posted:I'm just going to say right now that my surety of the details of the moon landings would be far different if the only primary source was a set of text logs released by a third party, which the US government had strong motivation to neither confirm nor deny. Even if it all seemed to line up and I generally believed it. I mean, that's one of the interesting things about Apollo: Russia had the data we were sending as well. There was never any Soviet attempt to claim it was fake because it was so incredibly easy to verify. Just....pointed your antenna to the moon.
|
|
#
?
Oct 11, 2021 03:12
|
|
|
CommieGIR posted:I mean, that's one of the interesting things about Apollo: Russia had the data we were sending as well. There was never any Soviet attempt to claim it was fake because it was so incredibly easy to verify. Just....pointed your antenna to the moon. It's also one of those things you can verify yourself right now due to reflectors left by the moon missions. Disclaimer, I mean a "you" that has access to a laser costing six figures and some time using a sizeable telescope, but I still mean the manned moon missions left evidence that can be independently verified by third parties.
|
|
#
?
Oct 11, 2021 05:16
|
|
|
I think a lot of the confusion in this thread and elsewhere is that some people are under the impression that the Leftists (for lack of a better description) are coming to wrong/unreasonable conclusions because they uncritically consume certain media. This is not the case. Those conclusions - whether about the US government, the Democratic Party, or foreign nations - had already been reached for a multitude of reasons and based off of a ton of evidence outside of the context of the specific discussion taking place. So when someone posts a link about a Democrat being bad or something, they did not arrive at this conclusion because of the contents of that link. They arrived at the conclusion due to the entire history of both the political party and our country in general. The link is posted not because the person is 100% sure it's true (something that is usually not possible with contemporary political media, since we can't read politicians' minds or predict the future, and more often than not the sources are just "people saying things"), but because this is a political discussion forum and there wouldn't be much to discuss if people ignored everything that wasn't 100% confirmed. The "Just The Facts" version of recent news is open to a variety of interpretations, and even then is still often full of editorializing. Some people get mad about people interpreting it in a way that negatively reflects on the Democrats, but these same people are choosing to interpret it in a way that always assumes that the Democrats are being honest and generally have good intentions (or at the very least assumes they're ambivalent about the left). Neither of these interpretations can be directly supported with hard/direct proof (with rare exceptions), because it's not possible to read minds. And the thing is, everyone does this. The "non-leftists" (again, ignore the term, you guys know what I mean) aren't going to suddenly get extremely skeptical if someone posts a link about a Republican doing bad stuff. This is because you have an understanding of the Republican Party formed from the history of its politicians' actions. If that specific article is debunked, it doesn't have much bearing on your opinions because your opinions are based off of a much wider body of evidence (and if the source has a strong bias, you probably just don't care because it's a bias you think is correct). It's the same with us. The reason we view both US political parties as being hostile to left-wing goals is "the entire history of those parties and the US government in general." It's not because we read an article by David Sirota that was ungenerous towards Joe Biden. Basically what I'm saying is, it doesn't really matter if someone posts articles that aren't accompanied by hard proof that they're true (or that comes from a "biased" source - which is basically "literally every source people link to"). No one is actually forming their viewpoints from the contents of those articles, and someone can always simply explain how the article is false. Arguments about a particular article/source are really just proxy arguments for a bigger political disagreement that stems from a much bigger range of information. And "unbiased 100% true and reliable" sources don't really exist in the first place, outside of linking directly to legislation text or something (and even then, people might complain if the text is posted via a biased website or Twitter account). Discendo Vox posted:Specific attributes of the the mediating sources of the information have been provided, including a pattern of selective representation and timed distribution, as well as a past pattern of altering mediated information. "Russia bad" has never been the root argument here. I mean, c'mon, I wasn't even the person who was originally talking about this. Scroll up and read. You selectively apply this "critical thought" in ways that exclude the sources you would prefer to avoid scrutinizing. What use is "critical thought" if it's only applied to the things you don't like? The reasons you use for disregarding sources can be applied to literally any mainstream media source (only significantly more so - and with far more significant consequences - than the media sources you feel most comfortable discrediting). This sort of source-centric discussion is not very useful if your goal is to actually understand or come to reasonable conclusions about anything. There is no reason that a source that is openly biased can't also publish true negative information about the thing it's biased against. This obviously also applies to mainstream sources; as far as I'm aware, no one has argued that everything published by the Washington Post should be ignored; just that you should be highly skeptical if (for example) the Washington Post publishes something where the only sources are from the government or NGOs with a direct incentive and history of being dishonest about the topic(s) in question.
|
|
#
?
Oct 11, 2021 19:37
|
|
|
why is this insanely bad thread stickied (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
|
|
#
?
Oct 11, 2021 20:51
|
|
|
The Kingfish posted:I’m starting to lose track. Is this an argument between people who think the DNC leaks were accurate and those who don’t? Are there posters here who believe that inflammatory emails from that set of leaks were fabricated by Wikileaks/Russian intelligence? Last I saw, it was an argument between people who believed that Wikileaks was a very unreliable source on certain subjects due to it's stated bias, and people who thought it was a reasonably reliable source in spite of or because of it's stated bias. Because people are having a slight disagreement on an esoteric topic, they seem to have decided that the person who disagrees with them is actually all that is wrong with society, as often happens.
|
|
#
?
Oct 11, 2021 20:57
|
|
|
I see Discendo Vox has still not learned how to read. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
|
|
#
?
Oct 11, 2021 23:59
|
|
|
tapping head with increasing vehemence well a lot of people say knowing how to read is good so you have to ask if it really is good or maybe, maybe it's actually bad (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
|
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2021 01:02
|
|
|
MonsieurChoc posted:I see Discendo Vox has still not learned how to read. Yeah, sorry, but if you're going to post ad-hominem you're going to need to do it against posters the mods don't personally agree with, eg: Somaen posted:Considering you are in this thread demanding definitive proof of wrongdoing by an unrepentant rapist's platform while also being a person that peddles 9/11 conspiracies you might need help that I don't have professional qualifications to give Which you will notice was not probated. It's easy, just follow the rules! (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST) (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
|
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2021 01:19
|
|
|
Holy poo poo shut the gently caress up with the "You can't read" ad homs guys.
CommieGIR fucked around with this message at 01:33 on Oct 12, 2021 |
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2021 01:24
|
|
|
CommieGIR posted:Holy poo poo shut the gently caress up with the "You can't read" ad homs guys. Oh hey since we're in the media literacy lets get into this particular misuse of logical fallacy. An ad hominem fallacy is defined as: quote:Ad hominem (Latin for 'to the person'), short for argumentum ad hominem, refers to several types of arguments, some but not all of which are fallacious. Typically this term refers to a rhetorical strategy where the speaker attacks the character, motive, or some other attribute of the person making an argument rather than attacking the substance of the argument itself. The most common form of ad hominem is "A makes a claim x, B asserts that A holds a property that is unwelcome, and hence B concludes that argument x is wrong". This is the most basic form, there's a lot of variations and you can go to Wikipedia or whatever for more details, many of which are relevant to this thread. But the version you're referring to, and misusing, is the idea that attacking a person or being snarky invalidates a point of view, or is a logical fallacy. It's not. It's using that attack as a reason to dismiss an argument, without addressing the actual point of contention that is what the fallacy refers to. A basic example: 1. "You're wrong because you smell bad!" - this is an ad hom fallacy 2. "You're wrong because of [Facts A, B, C], also you smell bad!" NOT an ad hom fallacy. At best you can complain about tone or politeness here. The quote you're referencing appears to be saying that DV must not be able to read because they don't understand the argument or material they is referencing. That's more of just being insulting than actually using an ad hom. While we're here, though there's a variation on the ad hom: quote:Appeal to motive is a special case of the ad hominem circumstantial argument in which an argument is challenged by calling into question the motives of its proposer. That appears to be what you and several other posters were doing with regards to Wikileaks. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
|
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2021 01:36
|
|
|
e:
|
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2021 01:38
|
|
|
Guys, if your response is to come into this thread, to basically defend two people just got probed for mocking someone's reading abilities rather than addressing his arguments, regardless of how poor you feel they are, then you should not be surprised if you eat a probation.
|
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2021 01:53
|
|
|
Jaxyon posted:That appears to be what you and several other posters were doing with regards to Wikileaks. We Report, You Decide. I've seen the argument played out in a few very important areas in which I assume most people would fall to my "side" rather than continuing to argue about Wikileaks/Assange, which is going to get some people's, "these are my people" defenses up. ...which everyone should work on understanding why they are there are how a source like that could manipulate someone when that, "this is my group, I agree with them" thoughts appear. In the first group, there's the, "all arguments have merit, regardless of the source. It's the facts that count." A poster comes in to a discussion (late 2020) about COVID and COVID mitigation and throws up an effort post about Sweden and how they've not locked down, they're right, etc. They quote and signal boost other people who are also, "just asking questions" about mask effectiveness, COVID dangers, etc. They post analyses by important people who agree with them. When epidemiologists come in to explain how a number of those arguments are false, how a number of those on that "side" (posters as well as source materials) do not have the requisite training and base level of knowledge to be doing those analyses in the first place, and that by signal boosting these that's not, "just asking questions" or "trying to establish what is true," it's how someone launders fringe ideas and conspiracy theory, those who actually have at least some of that basic knowledge are castigated as gate keepers or as those supporting the status quo. Given that the number of people who actually understand how to analyze and interpret scientific data and epidemiology stuff in particular is far lower than the rest of the population, those knowledgeable voices get drowned out by sheer volume of demanded questions and confrontational comments, if not veiled insults. Then in the second group, if Fox News accurately reports every crime involving an undocumented person and presents those to their audience, I would assume all of us here would first distrust because it's Fox News, and then point out they have omitted significant contextual information that makes their plan known - they prey on the inability of people to understand numbers and relative risk in their goal to turn people into xenophobic isolationist/nationalists. We all understand that, and so we do not fall to it. However, the regular/religious Fox News viewer has decided that Fox News is part of their group, so they will trust the information provided to them without trying to 1) determine the underlying facts and 2) determine what other related things are important in order to give context to the information and thus identify what goal Fox News is trying to achieve. If you come at an information source with a concrete opinion already in mind, you are at risk for falling to the, "this is my group, these people agree with me and are therefore good" that gave rise to and feeds the right wing media complex.
|
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2021 16:15
|
|
|
Probe me, idgaf, because this post here is exactly the problemHelloSailorSign posted:Then in the second group, if Fox News accurately reports every crime involving an undocumented person and presents those to their audience, I would assume all of us here would first distrust because it's Fox News, and then point out they have omitted significant contextual information that makes their plan known - they prey on the inability of people to understand numbers and relative risk in their goal to turn people into xenophobic isolationist/nationalists. We all understand that, and so we do not fall to it. However, the regular/religious Fox News viewer has decided that Fox News is part of their group, so they will trust the information provided to them without trying to 1) determine the underlying facts and 2) determine what other related things are important in order to give context to the information and thus identify what goal Fox News is trying to achieve. You're setting up your example here specifically to elicit sympathy for Fox's victim. You're acting as though one side is buying into vicious lies and half truths to push a story, and the victim is, even if personally a terrible person, certainly not emblematic of the danger of all foreigners in the way Fox would have you believe. A better example would be something along the lines of Fox running an exclusive, factual expose on Epstein's pedophile island focusing on the visits of prominent democrats. Both Fox and the democrats are sleaze here. Fox is absolutely pushing an agenda by focusing only on their enemies behavior instead of the more fair and balanced view that republicans *and* democrats visited pedophile island, but at the same time the reporting that democrats had sex parties with children is factual. The democrats *could* respond by protesting the factualness of the reporting, but they aren't. And its not like it isnt a newsworthy reveal. The democrats base much of their party appeal on the moral high ground, anything that calls that into question starts unraveling the party as a whole. Where does media analysis go from here? Both sides are pushing an agenda - Fox wants you to know the democrats are pedophiles to discredit them, the democrats want you to think they're the party with the moral high ground and are refusing to respond to discredit the reporting. The core problem is setting up both sides as though one is an evil manipulator and the other a helpless victim of unjust reporting, instead of the far more realistic view that everybody involved is a corrupt piece of poo poo attempting to shape the narrative and push focus where they want it. And some people willingly sign up as foot soldiers for the former point of view, either because they've chosen an ideological side and will defend it beyond reason or because they have tiny brains and assume if one side is bad that must make the other good. And this is why I keep yelling at people to examine their own biases. Clearly many people, some in this very thread!, have bought into the framing that the republicans/Russians/Fox/right are sneaky lying manipulators, so anything they say about our brave boys in blue must be slander that can be discarded without evidence. This assumes that team blue isn't also made up of sneaky lying manipulators constantly trying to build a narrative where they are the good guys and anything negative can be explained away by enemies acting against them. Media analysis, in this thread, appears to be nothing more than a crusade against heretical beliefs put forth by wicked tempters. Instead of trying to understand the intricacies of competing interests over control of the narrative you're holding trial to determine who the bad guy is, then discounting anything they've said against the innocent victim as baseless slander. Its a child's view of the world couched in a lot of big words. HelloSailorSign posted:If you come at an information source with a concrete opinion already in mind, you are at risk for falling to the, "this is my group, these people agree with me and are therefore good" that gave rise to and feeds the right wing media complex. This is *also* true for defending your faves against anything you would find upsetting. Posters just assume the DNC leaks must be doctored, with no evidence, because Russia bad and DNC good. Its not much different from assuming the COVID vaccine is a government spy program because of the history of the US using vaccination programs for nefarious purposes. The vaccination program in Pakistan was a deliberate deception to hunt for bin Laden, true, but does that mean no vaccines were distributed? Or that all vaccination programs are spy programs? Apparently it does to people like DV.
|
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2021 19:15
|
|
|
 You are actually addressing the posts and not just a single sentence bemoaning a poster's abilities. Chill.
|
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2021 19:20
|
|
|
Nix, conflating "attempting to shape the narrative and push focus where they want it" with "everybody involved is a corrupt piece of poo poo" is a mistake. The former is a part of the core idea of mediated messages, the latter is a rhetorical escape hatch that runs afoul of the same sort of behavior you are bemoaning in the rest of your post: that the level of perceived trustworthiness is directly proportional to the degree to which the observer agrees with the reporting.
|
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2021 19:38
|
|
|
Nix Panicus posted:Probe me, idgaf, because this post here is exactly the problem You put a lot of words together to make this about the Democratic Party, while at the same time "yelling" at people to examine their own biases. You posit that people believe everything that's put up, "about our brave boys in blue" while missing the point of the discussion, which is that we are not only all subject to media bias but that everyone must take into account not only their own biases, but the biases of the mediator, and the history of that mediator, and the possible risks to that mediator of being called out as false. You add "child's view" because you intend to deride those in the discussion that "disagree" with you, rather than come to the conversation in a good faith manner. Assuming the DNC leaks are most likely altered because of the source is not a, "Russia bad, DNC good" it's, "the Russian government has its own interests which would be served by disrupting trust in the American political and societal system." By assuming the previous line, it seems you are putting your own very strong bias - Dems Bad - in the lens of something when that's not even necessarily the case. The Russian government's history as an information mediator is poor, it's goals can be made by putting forth completely false information because it won't suffer for it when called out, and what the Russian government wants is to make a mockery of the American political system because it wants a destabilized and collapsing American so that it can continue to siphon off money from its own citizens while they don't see anything "better." Add in a splash of being able to exert control over Eastern European nations and/or the remainder of Europe as you see fit. This has nothing to do with the DNC being truthful or not, they simply are the target that could yield the greatest impact if successfully disrupted.
|
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2021 19:44
|
|
|
HelloSailorSign posted:Assuming the DNC leaks are most likely altered because of the source is not a, "Russia bad, DNC good" it's, "the Russian government has its own interests which would be served by disrupting trust in the American political and societal system." By assuming the previous line, it seems you are putting your own very strong bias - Dems Bad - in the lens of something when that's not even necessarily the case. Stepping in again to ask: Is this hypothetical? Do you believe that we should generally be skeptical of leaks sourced by GRU? Or do you believe that inflammatory documents from the DNC leaks were fabricated?
|
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2021 19:51
|
|
|
The Kingfish posted:Stepping in again to ask: Is this hypothetical? Do you believe that we should generally be skeptical of leaks sourced by GRU? Or do you believe that inflammatory documents from the DNC leaks were fabricated? Should be trust the GRU, working for Putin, who are enacting the goals of Putin which was clearly to influence the election in his favor, and did so using a man who was openly in contact with the opposing party in the United States so he could get tit-for-tat in exchange for leaking the data? Is that trustworthy? Or unbiased and reputable?
|
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2021 19:55
|
|
|
CommieGIR posted:Should be trust the GRU, working for Putin, who are enacting the goals of Putin which was clearly to influence the election in his favor, and did so using a man who was openly in contact with the opposing party in the United States so he could get tit-for-tat in exchange for leaking the data? With or without the actual context of the DNC leaks? That is my question. It makes no sense at all to discuss any real-world leaks as if in a vacuum. Here, a large number of DNC docs were purportedly leaked. The DNC response was to warn that some of the documents could have been falsified. To me, that is as good as an admission. Given that response, in this context, I believe the documents are accurate. Further, given the DNC’s response, I don’t think the trustworthiness, reputability, or bias of the leak’s source are at all relevant. I would trust a document batch leaked by Alex Jones (assuming the leaks attains a sufficiently high media profile) if the DNC responded the way it did here. If the context were different I would feel differently. If the DNC said “there are fabricated documents; here is an example.” Then I would have to weigh my trust in the parties involved. In that situation, the trustworthiness, bias, and reputability of parties would be relevant.
|
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2021 20:09
|
|
|
The Kingfish posted:Here, a large number of DNC docs were purportedly leaked. The DNC response was to warn that some of the documents could have been falsified. To me, that is as good as an admission. What is being debated is this: given any specific email conversation in the trove, how can one tell whether it is genuine or fake? Is it okay to assume that it is genuine simply because of the belief that the DNC is equally bad/evil as GRU? Does the badness/evilness of each party end up canceling each other out? The Kingfish posted:If the context were different I would feel differently. If the DNC said “there are fabricated documents; here is an example.” Then I would have to weigh my trust in the parties involved. In that situation, the trustworthiness, bias, and reputability of parties would be relevant. I don't understand how, in your mind, the DNC proving the fakeness of a single email would somehow compromise the genuineness/trustworthiness of the entire dataset. I also don't believe that the narrative you're pushing would not have shifted to "OK, they showed that one specific example was fabricated — what about all the rest? Did they give a single example because that's the only one that's fabricated, and the rest are genuine???" The entire reason organizations do not confirm or deny the specific elements of a hack is that doing so often leads to more questions and, subsequently, more embarrassment. edit: i misread a part of what you wrote Thorn Wishes Talon fucked around with this message at 22:49 on Oct 12, 2021 |
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2021 22:45
|
|
|
Thorn Wishes Talon posted:What is being debated is this: given any specific email conversation in the trove, how can one tell whether it is genuine or fake? Is it okay to assume that it is genuine simply because of the belief that the DNC is equally bad/evil as GRU? Does the badness/evilness of each party end up canceling each other out? If the DNC proved (or even claimed) that one specific email was a forgery it would put the trustworthiness of the entire leak in question. I’m not saying it would immediately put to bed all questions of legitimacy, but it would do a lot of work to discredit the whole. I can elaborate on why this is if you like, but it seems fairly self-explanatory. You suggest the DNC might have chosen not to specifically discredit any of the leaked documents as part of a public relations strategy. Possibly. But what am I suppose to make of that suggestion? There weren’t that many consequential documents leaked. As others have already pointed out itt, the vast majority of the documents were anodyne. If the DNC is afraid of blowback from disproving one embarrassing document, then doesn’t it stand to reason that some of the embarrassing documents are genuine? I guess this comes close to your question about my conception of bad/evilness of the parties involved. I’m not interested into getting to the relative wickedness of the DNC vs. the GRU. But I will say that I don’t trust the DNC and I’m not willing to assume that every consequential document is a forgery just because the DNC suggests* they are. *Again, to my knowledge, the DNC has never claimed there are forgeries in the Wikileaks dump. It has only said that there may be forgeries.
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2021 00:39
|
|
|
It seems to me that if, theoretically, the DNC were to provide evidence that a particular piece of the leak was falsified, then the counter-narrative would just end up being "well clearly all the other pieces aren't falsified, or they would have proven it", which would go believed by most of the people who want to believe the leaks are genuine anyway. The whole point of the Glomar response is to avoid this whole worthless exchange.
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2021 00:54
|
|
|
fool of sound posted:It seems to me that if, theoretically, the DNC were to provide evidence that a particular piece of the leak was falsified, then the counter-narrative would just end up being "well clearly all the other pieces aren't falsified, or they would have proven it", which would go believed by most of the people who want to believe the leaks are genuine anyway. The whole point of the Glomar response is to avoid this whole worthless exchange. It seems like that response fails utterly, then, because it only avoids this whole "worthless" exchange among people who don't need to be convinced. A better way to avoid the exchange, IMO, would be to have proper security on your email servers, or, even better than that, to not write things in your emails about your conspiracies to rig your own party's primary election and attempt to influence the other party's primary in favor of a candidate that you perceive to be a clownshoes electoral walk in the park as an opponent. What you're saying is, effectively, we just have to trust the DNC that some of the leaks may have been altered, on their word. Unsurprisingly, not everyone values the word of the DNC to the same degree that you do. That doesn't make an exchange on the topic worthless. That makes it a debate!
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2021 01:00
|
|
|
fool of sound posted:It seems to me that if, theoretically, the DNC were to provide evidence that a particular piece of the leak was falsified, then the counter-narrative would just end up being "well clearly all the other pieces aren't falsified, or they would have proven it", which would go believed by most of the people who want to believe the leaks are genuine anyway. The whole point of the Glomar response is to avoid this whole worthless exchange. Why not just provide evidence for all of the consequential emails? There were only a few dozen of them. I’m not particularly convinced by hypotheticals where the DNC could disprove the leaks but is choosing not to. I don’t believe the DNC is entitled to that much good will. I frankly doubt you would give many other organizations the same benefit of the doubt. E: ram dass in hell posted:What you're saying is, effectively, we just have to trust the DNC that some of the leaks may have been altered, on their word. Unsurprisingly, not everyone values the word of the DNC to the same degree that you do. That doesn't make an exchange on the topic worthless. That makes it a debate! Not even “on their word.” The DNC has never claimed there was a single hacked document. The Kingfish fucked around with this message at 01:16 on Oct 13, 2021 |
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2021 01:14
|
|
|
ram dass in hell posted:It seems like that response fails utterly, then, because it only avoids this whole "worthless" exchange among people who don't need to be convinced. A better way to avoid the exchange, IMO, would be to have proper security on your email servers, or, even better than that, to not write things in your emails about your conspiracies to rig your own party's primary election and attempt to influence the other party's primary. You sure are asserting that I hold a bunch of beliefs that I have not claimed. My point is that there is no way of determining which parts of the leak, if any, are falsified. If the hack only managed to get fairly innocuous stuff, then the GRU would have motivation to falsify some more sensational materials. If the hack was 100% genuine, then the DNC has motivation to insinuate falsification. The same holds true with greyer interpretations as well. The reader's response is strongly, if not completely informed by ideology: which party does their pre-existing worldview tell them they should trust. I have no trouble believing that the DNC was actively working against the Sanders campaign and/or actively supporting Clinton. That is consistent with my views on them as an organization. That doesn't mean that I have any particular reason to believe that the leaks were or were not partially doctored, and I don't think that Kingfish's suggested course of action would have changed that. The Kingfish posted:Why not just provide evidence for all of the consequential emails? There were only a few dozen of them. What evidence could be considered convincing? How do you prove that an email was never written/was written differently when you control the servers in question and could easily lie about it? fool of sound fucked around with this message at 01:20 on Oct 13, 2021 |
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2021 01:16
|
|
|
And along those lines: There is absolutely NO reason to take Assange, Wikileaks, the GRU, or Putin at face value since all four of those things were the reason we had the leaks. And we absolutely should question the fact that Assange and Wikileaks openly worked with the GOP to make them impactful, or that Assange's personal vendetta was the motivation rather than any sort of desire of transparency, while he openly asked the Trump campaign for trades for helping their campaign by timing the release with them. Or that they released the leaks specifically to help stir up conspiracy theories around the murder of a staffer. These things taint the implicit transparency that Wikileaks is supposed to represent. Regardless of the validity of the leaks (which we cannot confirm because the DNC specifically chose to neither confirm nor deny the contents, only having key people resign over them to hope to deal with the damage) the overall process is not some unbiased source to be taken at face value alone. CommieGIR fucked around with this message at 01:22 on Oct 13, 2021 |
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2021 01:19
|
|
|
CommieGIR posted:And along those lines: There is absolutely NO reason to take Assange, Wikileaks, the GRU, or Putin at face value since all four of those things were the reason we had the leaks. And we absolutely should question the fact that Assange and Wikileaks openly worked with the GOP to make them impactful, or that Assange's personal vendetta was the motivation rather than any sort of desire of transparency, while he openly asked the Trump campaign for trades for helping their campaign by timing the release with them. Or that they released the leaks specifically to help stir up conspiracy theories around the murder of a staffer. I completely agree with all of this. I also think that everything you said here applies equally to, say, the new york times, the washington post, MSNBC, and so on. Do you agree? This isn't a gotcha. I don't understand the metric you're using if it's not equally applied.
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2021 01:28
|
|
|
fool of sound posted:
I don’t know how computers work well enough to speak on this, although I suspect an independent audit would go far. I’m not saying there is any evidence that would have convinced everybody they are fake. But I will say that, personally, I am convinced they are true because of the DNC’s refusal to affirmatively claim there are any forgeries in the leak.
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2021 01:29
|
|
|
ram dass in hell posted:I completely agree with all of this. I also think that everything you said here applies equally to, say, the new york times, the washington post, MSNBC, and so on. Do you agree? It is always important to keep in mind the motivations and worldview of a source, yes. All the big name outlets put out plenty of slanted, poor, or unverified reporting. Trying to identify that is the purpose of this thread.
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2021 01:32
|
|
|
fool of sound posted:It is always important to keep in mind the motivations and worldview of a source, yes. All the big name outlets put out plenty of slanted, poor, or unverified reporting. Trying to identify that is the purpose of this thread. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is, for example, Washington Post: this is an outlet owned by an oligarch. The second-richest man in the world's privately-owned propaganda paper. This does not mean to me that their reporting will just be skewed or poor or unverified, it means to me that even in cases where the reporting looks "good" to me, I cannot evaluate the truthfulness of the reporting, cannot factor in the impact of lies by omission in what goes unreported, cannot rely on any of the work published for anything except for perhaps, as an indicator of "this is what the world's second-wealthiest oligarch wants us to pay attention to", in the same sense as you're saying that the DNC email leaks were an indicator of what Vladimir Putin wants us to pay attention to (instead of the access Hollywood tape, in that instance).
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2021 01:38
|
|
|
ram dass in hell posted:That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is, for example, Washington Post: this is an outlet owned by an oligarch. The second-richest man in the world's privately-owned propaganda paper. This does not mean to me that their reporting will just be skewed or poor or unverified, it means to me that even in cases where the reporting looks "good" to me, I cannot evaluate the truthfulness of the reporting, cannot factor in the impact of lies by omission in what goes unreported, cannot rely on any of the work published for anything except for perhaps, as an indicator of "this is what the world's second-wealthiest oligarch wants us to pay attention to", in the same sense as you're saying that the DNC email leaks were an indicator of what Vladimir Putin wants us to pay attention to (instead of the access Hollywood tape, in that instance). "The Washington Post is owned by an oligarch, and sometimes it puts out material that seems suspiciously misleading or slanted in favor of him and his interests" is one of the things that should be kept in mind when evaluating the Washington Post, yes. Similarly, "the New York Times editorial board has consistently supported US warfare" (among other things) should be kept in mind when analyzing their reporting where that might be relevant. Neither of those things being true means that all of their reporting can be dismissed out of hand, or worse, that reporting that the viewer dislikes can be selectively dismissed.
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2021 01:44
|
|
|
fool of sound posted:"The Washington Post is owned by an oligarch, and sometimes it puts out material that seems suspiciously misleading or slanted in favor of him and his interests" is one of the things that should be kept in mind when evaluating the Washington Post, yes. Similarly, "the New York Times editorial board has consistently supported US warfare" (among other things) should be kept in mind when analyzing their reporting where that might be relevant. Neither of those things being true means that all of their reporting can be dismissed out of hand, or worse, that reporting that the viewer dislikes can be selectively dismissed. I don't understand why you don't think this applies to Wikileaks? "Neither of those things being true means that all of their reporting can be dismissed out of hand, or worse, that reporting that the viewer dislikes can be selectively dismissed." That's exactly what's being done by the OP and multiple mods itt? It's just different because it's Russia-adjacent?
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2021 01:47
|
|
|
Ultimately, all reporting is conducted by people being paid for by someone else, or by people who have sufficient motivation to do so for free. Identifying this and reading their work with this is mind is part of proper analysis. It does not mean that the reporting is tainted and useless.ram dass in hell posted:I don't understand why you don't think this applies to Wikileaks? I can't speak for anyone else, but I'm consistently saying that I distrust both Assange and the DNC, and do not see any particular evidence to believe one more strongly than the other. I generally believe that the DNC was biased against Sanders and towards Clinton, as the leaks suggest, but I acknowledge this is in large part a product of my support for Sanders and dislike of Clinton. fool of sound fucked around with this message at 01:53 on Oct 13, 2021 |
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2021 01:49
|
|
|
My understanding of the OP material is that we should consider the entirety of a message's context in addition to its actual content, to include the identity and motives/biases of the source, timing of release, framing, any "noise," our own bias/worldview as a receiver. It seems like some posters want to discard some of that context or rely solely on personal bias/worldview for evaluating communications. Keep in mind that the 2016 DNC email leak is a historical event that is well-documented, we're discussing media messaging in hindsight. Is Assange a neutral, unbiased crusader for government transparency? No, he leaked the DNC emails explicitly to hurt Clinton's campaign. The leaks were timed to coincide with the Democratic National Convention and then a couple days before the election. The goal of the leaks was to damage the Clinton campaign and it worked, not only because of the content of the emails but also because they leaked a ton of personal and contact information. That doesn't mean there's necessarily fabricated or omitted material in the leaks, but it's important when discussing them to keep in mind the full context. What's more challenging is applying media analysis in real time as events unfold. What if next year WikiLeaks releases material damaging to Dem midterm campaigns, or more leaks in 2024 presidential season? Well, we know they've acted to harm Democratic campaigns in the past and Mueller indicted 12 Russians suspected to be behind the DNC leaks that WikiLeaks published. That doesn't invalidate any future material, but we should keep the whole context in mind when evaluating.
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2021 01:50
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 23, 2024 12:41 |
|
|
fool of sound posted:Ultimately, all reporting is conducted by people being paid for by someone else, or by people who have sufficient motivation to do so for free. Identifying this and reading their work with this is mind is part of proper analysis. It does not mean that the reporting is tainted and useless. So the DNC email leaks were not tainted and useless, then? That seems like a sizeable shift from a page or two ago.
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2021 01:52
|
|