I've been saying it since the Twitter Files first dropped -- the bigger story isn't the fact there's a Twitter Files, the bigger story is there's also a Google Files, an NBC Files, a New York Times Files, a Facebook Files, etc etc. And now we know there's a UW Files.
Nearly every 'important' institution in the country was coordinating with government to suppress the legal speech of Americans -- and sooner or later we'll see it all.
We know from the work of Matt and others that there was and is suppression of information, but producing videos or articles to counter what the authors see as misinformation is not the same as suppressing information. I'm not defending or condemning it in this comment, simply pointing out the difference.
- Censoring and "de-amplifying" The Great Barrington Declaration was suppression of speech by social media companies (in collusion with academia and the government).
- Knowingly posting information about it that's false or misleading with the intention to deceive readers would be propaganda.
- Posting a sincere counter-argument would be free speech.
Yes, there's been plenty of both and I object to both propaganda and suppression of speech, especially the latter. I was simply pointing out that they're different.
This is the first time that I can point out that government, media, corporations, universities, and the elites have all line up against the common citizenry in this country and the effects are astonishing. It's not even an uphill battle to fight it, it's like scaling a cliff we've already fallen off of. The propaganda is strong and the gaslighting is so frequent we may actually run out of gas. I honestly don't know what to do except maybe disconnect from it all and enjoy the last little bit of freedom while we still have some.
Absolutely have a full offensive being deployed against the American people. Beyond that, it's happening in other places around the world. This is a long game, well coordinated effort, lead by who?
Independent media is being starved of traditional revenue and had been since FB and Google(and craigslist originally) has sucked the ad and classified dollars from media outlets. News cannot be a product itself (subscriptions/donation models) because the moment something is written that someone does not agree with most people pull their financial support.
Additionally, journalism philanthropy has been captured by the left through initiatives like Press Forward which is a top-down reforming of where money goes lead by the Knight Foundation. They are pushing money to outlets who support "our democracy" and directing other money to places with bloated administrations like the Institute of Nonprofit News and LION Publishers to hand pick outlets who toe the line and/or do everything but create actual journalism. Much of it is directed to covering social issues that only further the divide among people. Other money is directed to "community engagement" and to produce journoactivists.
Independent media is being rounded up by these efforts in order to survive. Unless there is some other source of revenue to keep an actual independent investigative news outlet afloat it's pretty much game over on the media front.
I agree with almost everything, but disagree with this part:
-------
Independent media is being starved of traditional revenue and had been since FB and Google(and craigslist originally) has sucked the ad and classified dollars from media outlets. News cannot be a product itself (subscriptions/donation models) because the moment something is written that someone does not agree with most people pull their financial support.
-------
IMO we are in this situation partially because the 'traditional' revenue comes from ads and not quality content. Predictably, the industry shifts to cater to that revenue stream. Substack flips this on its head, and the writers cater to the READERS, not the advertisers. This is a much better system, even if you have the occasional subscriber who will leave if you say something they don't like. (Likely they will be replaced by two people who appreciate honesty!)
The only trouble I see with this Substack model (well actually two -@tardigrade mentioned the other) is that I can’t pay for everything I want to pay for; I just don’t have that kind of money.
It's hard to not notice the "other" bubbles. I dislike Rachel Maddow and yet I've never even watched MSNBC. Their unhinged rhetoric is brought up in "our" bubble more than I need to hear!
This is going to shock people. You have to pay for free speech and free government. You have to subscribe to independent media and donate to campaigns. This is not your father's Oldsmobile. Sorry.
I don’t disagree with this statement but the scale of money from Substack doesn’t compare to the money from advertisers. I spent many years in local newspaper media and will say that the wall between sales and edit was sacrosanct. The only thing that kowtowed to the advertisers was the “best of” awards.
I spent many years working for a small local newspaper. There was supposed to be separation, but some editorial decisions did take impact on advertising into account.
Post-2008 is where I first noticed any cracks in this wall, but yes, it did get worse as it went on because of the ad dollars bleeding away.
I still maintain news is not a product to be sold as it's only buyers are generally people who want to confirm their bias or the very few of us that exist that like to read several viewpoints to create a full picture of what is going on.
Philanthropy and state funding are also not the solutions clearly. Not sure what will actually save journalism in the current political environment. If that ever changes then maybe there is hope but as I can see we are in a massive sandstorm with no clear line of sight.
EDIT: To be clear, I'm speaking of the companies I've worked for and not as a whole. I cannot speak on behalf of all of them.
Agreed. The hope is that this is not 2020. Or, even 2016 when Trump happened to slip through and win. Because now--- there are numerous voices out there beyond the gatekeepers. Like where I am commenting, now.
For our time, this IS a binary choice. The only thing we have left is our vote. Even then, Rep. Jamie Raskin and Pres. Biden have foretold that it won't count if Trump wins. They have foretold he cannot win. But I am voting R up and down the ticket. Maybe, last chance. To vote for anybody else, I mean.
I think I’d argue that the “half” is a captured audience who are either ignorant or indifferent to the propaganda/gaslighting because it appeases their base desires. Ultimately it’s just signaling to get their consent and long term not beneficial to them.
That's kinda what I've resigned myself to....at 74 just ride it out as comfortably as I can given the leftist/socialist tilt of our media, culture, educational institutions at all levels, and government.
I used to work there. Seriously, Mainland Chinese students almost outnumber any WA students there. That was a decade ago, perhaps they do now. Many of them had almost no skills in English, so I have no idea what they could get out of classes there.
I always thought it was semi-treasonous that a state institution was almost impossible for a citizen of the state to be able to attend (unless they could benefit the football team...)
Give your program a deceptive name, "Center for an Informed Public" not only to try to deceive said public, but also to deceive the rubes who populate said program.
Every American ought to know that the “Disinformation” industry was created from the belief that the 2016 election was stolen, and it culminated by declaring that any suspicion of the 2020 election was “disinformation”.
I disagree, DNC and Co. did not harbour the notion that the 2016 election was "stolen" as much as they were stunned that their own planned theft was overwhelmed by Trump voters. They spent the next four years planning that nothing of the sort would occur again. Ever.
I don't think "they" even care about the difference between disinformation and truth. The only thing that matters is: Does it support the deep state's narrative?
Prebunking is alive and well today. The fictitious polls are to condition the masses. It helps sell the narrative that a Kamala win is normal and that election fraud is a conspiracy theory.
'What system do anti-disinformation researchers use to settle on the “false and misleading” narratives for study? If you guessed “not much of a system at all,” it appears you’d be right.'
Au contraire. I think they choose those narratives most likely to be lucrative in their grants and fundraising. Of course the government will distribute its largesse to those who are working to protect the government's preferred narrative. Follow the money.
Bingo. This is just like the scientific field. Scientists who don't produce "desired results" are defunded in favor of those who will. Many have come out and spoke about it already.
Quite a lot of scientists have, which is how I got into this whole subject to begin with. For example I followed John Ioannidis for many years, and was appalled when in the spring of 2020 he was demonized, his reputation suffered, and almost lost his job—for coauthoring a study (with Jay Battacharya) to determine more accurately the real infection fatality rate of Covid.
Their cocksure attitude as they dismantle free speech shows that they lack shame or capacity for restraint. This is "problematic" and "dangerous." They won't be corrected. The mindset has been tattooed onto their private parts. They enjoy the feeling of comradeship and making anyone who differs be silenced and/or be let go. We saw this with the Puritans. We saw it with the communists. We saw it with the McCarthy reactionists to the communists. They know they are special and deserve obeisance. They are willing to fight dirty for their cause.
Question: are elections still considered fair in America if every major news agency, all of the entertainment industries, all social media companies, all of Silicon Valley Tech, and all of the newly created mis and disinformation organizations are working to support and elect one political party?
This raises all kinds of questions. The lack of clarity on how something is ticketed as disinformation is a big red flag. A color I chose on purpose. For the researchers and techs it's like an atom bomb being built without thinking about the consequences of using it in real life. "Above my pay grade" they may think. "Don't want to disturb the flow of funding" may be their immediate concern. But the creeping red color over the horizon says to me that totalitarian control is the true goal, one topic, one viewpoint at a time.
For a while someone working at this sketchy goal could presume themselves a patriot without having to have the hard discussions about "what are we really doing here?" and talking about issues of censorship and shaping the outlines of allowable discourse in a democratic republic. But they should have had those talks. And they should have blown the whistle.
The first clue is the title of a program; we should know by now that the intent is often the opposite of what the name implies.
It shouldn't be a surprise that these groups really didn't have a process of their own to determine which information needed to be labeled as "mis-" or "dis-" -- they didn't need one because another entity told them which information needed to be pre-bunked, labeled and suppressed. And that entity was (is) the federal government.
I've been saying it since the Twitter Files first dropped -- the bigger story isn't the fact there's a Twitter Files, the bigger story is there's also a Google Files, an NBC Files, a New York Times Files, a Facebook Files, etc etc. And now we know there's a UW Files.
Nearly every 'important' institution in the country was coordinating with government to suppress the legal speech of Americans -- and sooner or later we'll see it all.
All true, but what? Never going to vote 'em out.
As they say, you can vote your way into socialism, but you can't vote your way out....truly Orwellian stuff here...
As the Venezuelans learned to their great dismay.
You clearly have no idea what socialism is, merely the US version used to gaslight generations of Americans. These people are not socialists, ffs!
Here's the key thing to understand: in the realm of politics, leftism is almost always a TACTIC rather than a real governing philosophy.
No, they're fascists.
Why don't you enlighten us.....
Too true, I fear.
Indeed, they are hard-wired into the system.
We know from the work of Matt and others that there was and is suppression of information, but producing videos or articles to counter what the authors see as misinformation is not the same as suppressing information. I'm not defending or condemning it in this comment, simply pointing out the difference.
No, it's propaganda.
Your "No" is out of place - propaganda is not suppression of legal speech. That seems perfectly clear to me.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/propaganda
Examples:
- Censoring and "de-amplifying" The Great Barrington Declaration was suppression of speech by social media companies (in collusion with academia and the government).
- Knowingly posting information about it that's false or misleading with the intention to deceive readers would be propaganda.
- Posting a sincere counter-argument would be free speech.
There seems to have been plenty of both - propaganda and suppression. Somewhat less free speech, let alone democracy.
I do have a caveat, an issue, with Matt's project here, which I';; go back to the top to post.
Yes, there's been plenty of both and I object to both propaganda and suppression of speech, especially the latter. I was simply pointing out that they're different.
This is the first time that I can point out that government, media, corporations, universities, and the elites have all line up against the common citizenry in this country and the effects are astonishing. It's not even an uphill battle to fight it, it's like scaling a cliff we've already fallen off of. The propaganda is strong and the gaslighting is so frequent we may actually run out of gas. I honestly don't know what to do except maybe disconnect from it all and enjoy the last little bit of freedom while we still have some.
No doubt we're stuck in the middle of a full court press, but independent media will break it. I just wrote about this yesterday!
https://simulationcommander.substack.com/p/full-court-press
(Bonus Matt Taibbi video!)
Absolutely have a full offensive being deployed against the American people. Beyond that, it's happening in other places around the world. This is a long game, well coordinated effort, lead by who?
Independent media is being starved of traditional revenue and had been since FB and Google(and craigslist originally) has sucked the ad and classified dollars from media outlets. News cannot be a product itself (subscriptions/donation models) because the moment something is written that someone does not agree with most people pull their financial support.
Additionally, journalism philanthropy has been captured by the left through initiatives like Press Forward which is a top-down reforming of where money goes lead by the Knight Foundation. They are pushing money to outlets who support "our democracy" and directing other money to places with bloated administrations like the Institute of Nonprofit News and LION Publishers to hand pick outlets who toe the line and/or do everything but create actual journalism. Much of it is directed to covering social issues that only further the divide among people. Other money is directed to "community engagement" and to produce journoactivists.
Independent media is being rounded up by these efforts in order to survive. Unless there is some other source of revenue to keep an actual independent investigative news outlet afloat it's pretty much game over on the media front.
I agree with almost everything, but disagree with this part:
-------
Independent media is being starved of traditional revenue and had been since FB and Google(and craigslist originally) has sucked the ad and classified dollars from media outlets. News cannot be a product itself (subscriptions/donation models) because the moment something is written that someone does not agree with most people pull their financial support.
-------
IMO we are in this situation partially because the 'traditional' revenue comes from ads and not quality content. Predictably, the industry shifts to cater to that revenue stream. Substack flips this on its head, and the writers cater to the READERS, not the advertisers. This is a much better system, even if you have the occasional subscriber who will leave if you say something they don't like. (Likely they will be replaced by two people who appreciate honesty!)
The only trouble I see with this Substack model (well actually two -@tardigrade mentioned the other) is that I can’t pay for everything I want to pay for; I just don’t have that kind of money.
I know EXACTLY what you mean!!!!
ME TOO! I'd love to subscribe to 40 Subs. Can only afford a few.
Then continue to belly up to the trough of free corporate info. Hey, it's cheap and filling.
I just need an app that will take legacy media reporting and, abracadabra, it comes out completely opposite of that. Ahhh... the truth at last!
I spend way too many hours each day on substack, but I'm aware that we're creating our own bubbles too.
It's certainly something that I worry about -- but every time I take a step out into clown world, I feel better about my positions.
agree
Yes, this can be true. As long as you keep an awareness of it you can keep yourself in check.
It's hard to not notice the "other" bubbles. I dislike Rachel Maddow and yet I've never even watched MSNBC. Their unhinged rhetoric is brought up in "our" bubble more than I need to hear!
This is going to shock people. You have to pay for free speech and free government. You have to subscribe to independent media and donate to campaigns. This is not your father's Oldsmobile. Sorry.
I don’t disagree with this statement but the scale of money from Substack doesn’t compare to the money from advertisers. I spent many years in local newspaper media and will say that the wall between sales and edit was sacrosanct. The only thing that kowtowed to the advertisers was the “best of” awards.
I spent many years working for a small local newspaper. There was supposed to be separation, but some editorial decisions did take impact on advertising into account.
Post-2008 is where I first noticed any cracks in this wall, but yes, it did get worse as it went on because of the ad dollars bleeding away.
I still maintain news is not a product to be sold as it's only buyers are generally people who want to confirm their bias or the very few of us that exist that like to read several viewpoints to create a full picture of what is going on.
Philanthropy and state funding are also not the solutions clearly. Not sure what will actually save journalism in the current political environment. If that ever changes then maybe there is hope but as I can see we are in a massive sandstorm with no clear line of sight.
EDIT: To be clear, I'm speaking of the companies I've worked for and not as a whole. I cannot speak on behalf of all of them.
"I don’t disagree with this statement but the scale of money from Substack doesn’t compare to the money from advertisers."
--------
Not yet -- but the MSM is in freefall while places like this keep growing.
Yes, hopefully this accelerates to the point that is no longer profitable to the 8 or so corporations that own all of it.
Look no further than the WEF.
Read it, LIKE
Agreed. The hope is that this is not 2020. Or, even 2016 when Trump happened to slip through and win. Because now--- there are numerous voices out there beyond the gatekeepers. Like where I am commenting, now.
For our time, this IS a binary choice. The only thing we have left is our vote. Even then, Rep. Jamie Raskin and Pres. Biden have foretold that it won't count if Trump wins. They have foretold he cannot win. But I am voting R up and down the ticket. Maybe, last chance. To vote for anybody else, I mean.
LIKE
'...against the common citizenry in this country and the effects are astonishing. It's not even an uphill battle to fight it...'
Against *half* the common citizenry, which means in addition to the PTB, we are fighting half of our friends and neighbors too.
I think I’d argue that the “half” is a captured audience who are either ignorant or indifferent to the propaganda/gaslighting because it appeases their base desires. Ultimately it’s just signaling to get their consent and long term not beneficial to them.
That doesn't mean we're not struggling against them.
I think that's all we got left to do.
"...it's like scaling a cliff we've already fallen off of."
More like looking for something to slow our rate of plummeting in mid-plummet.
Free-fall and cannot find the goddam D-ring.
Flat-spin…
That's kinda what I've resigned myself to....at 74 just ride it out as comfortably as I can given the leftist/socialist tilt of our media, culture, educational institutions at all levels, and government.
Dented vessel he may be, the only answer is to elect Trump.
Such a beautiful campus. Such loathsome people.
I used to work there. Seriously, Mainland Chinese students almost outnumber any WA students there. That was a decade ago, perhaps they do now. Many of them had almost no skills in English, so I have no idea what they could get out of classes there.
I always thought it was semi-treasonous that a state institution was almost impossible for a citizen of the state to be able to attend (unless they could benefit the football team...)
All schools love international students and favor them over all others. Because they pay full tuition.
Not a coincidence that the main campus plaza at UW is called "Red Square"...
lol, like
Almost ashamed it’s my Alma mater
Give your program a deceptive name, "Center for an Informed Public" not only to try to deceive said public, but also to deceive the rubes who populate said program.
Facts??? We don't need no stinkin' facts!
Orwellian names are now the norm.
That's the norm. Antifa, BLM, queers for Palestine.... The names themselves are the punchline.
lol, like.......TRUE
I always wondered what those kids who were snitches in 6th grade would end up doing with their lives.
Hall monitors for life.
Governor of MN turned VP candidate is another potential career track.
Tracy Flick's doppelganger.
Kate Starbird. She HAS to be some sort of psyop, yes? Please?
West Point graduate Kate Starbird? lol
Seems she was born there but didn't go there. She did play in the WNBA interestingly.
Ah yes, I stand corrected. Thanks, John.
Her name pops up a lot.
Every American ought to know that the “Disinformation” industry was created from the belief that the 2016 election was stolen, and it culminated by declaring that any suspicion of the 2020 election was “disinformation”.
I disagree, DNC and Co. did not harbour the notion that the 2016 election was "stolen" as much as they were stunned that their own planned theft was overwhelmed by Trump voters. They spent the next four years planning that nothing of the sort would occur again. Ever.
exactly right
A shorter and clearer definition of misinformation (or malinformation or disinformation):
Anything that would make the current administration look bad, whether it is true or false (but especially if it is true).
At least the (expletive deleted) would be honest about it.
I don't think "they" even care about the difference between disinformation and truth. The only thing that matters is: Does it support the deep state's narrative?
Ok I guess “prebunking” means “pre-fabricating the ‘narrative’ for when we get caught”.
Prebunking is alive and well today. The fictitious polls are to condition the masses. It helps sell the narrative that a Kamala win is normal and that election fraud is a conspiracy theory.
Yup
'What system do anti-disinformation researchers use to settle on the “false and misleading” narratives for study? If you guessed “not much of a system at all,” it appears you’d be right.'
Au contraire. I think they choose those narratives most likely to be lucrative in their grants and fundraising. Of course the government will distribute its largesse to those who are working to protect the government's preferred narrative. Follow the money.
Bingo. This is just like the scientific field. Scientists who don't produce "desired results" are defunded in favor of those who will. Many have come out and spoke about it already.
Quite a lot of scientists have, which is how I got into this whole subject to begin with. For example I followed John Ioannidis for many years, and was appalled when in the spring of 2020 he was demonized, his reputation suffered, and almost lost his job—for coauthoring a study (with Jay Battacharya) to determine more accurately the real infection fatality rate of Covid.
boggles my mind to think how dangerous and treacherous this is.
Their cocksure attitude as they dismantle free speech shows that they lack shame or capacity for restraint. This is "problematic" and "dangerous." They won't be corrected. The mindset has been tattooed onto their private parts. They enjoy the feeling of comradeship and making anyone who differs be silenced and/or be let go. We saw this with the Puritans. We saw it with the communists. We saw it with the McCarthy reactionists to the communists. They know they are special and deserve obeisance. They are willing to fight dirty for their cause.
concur totally, cheating for the cause is just part of the revolution. Not shameful.
The ends justify the means, as one of their leading lights famously said.
Question: are elections still considered fair in America if every major news agency, all of the entertainment industries, all social media companies, all of Silicon Valley Tech, and all of the newly created mis and disinformation organizations are working to support and elect one political party?
No.
This raises all kinds of questions. The lack of clarity on how something is ticketed as disinformation is a big red flag. A color I chose on purpose. For the researchers and techs it's like an atom bomb being built without thinking about the consequences of using it in real life. "Above my pay grade" they may think. "Don't want to disturb the flow of funding" may be their immediate concern. But the creeping red color over the horizon says to me that totalitarian control is the true goal, one topic, one viewpoint at a time.
For a while someone working at this sketchy goal could presume themselves a patriot without having to have the hard discussions about "what are we really doing here?" and talking about issues of censorship and shaping the outlines of allowable discourse in a democratic republic. But they should have had those talks. And they should have blown the whistle.
The first clue is the title of a program; we should know by now that the intent is often the opposite of what the name implies.
It shouldn't be a surprise that these groups really didn't have a process of their own to determine which information needed to be labeled as "mis-" or "dis-" -- they didn't need one because another entity told them which information needed to be pre-bunked, labeled and suppressed. And that entity was (is) the federal government.